Zoe Hobbs has become the first New Zealand woman to win the 100 metres at a Commonwealth Games, powering home through pouring rain at Glasgow’s Scotstoun Stadium to take gold in a national and Oceania record of 10.93 seconds.
Hobbs came from the outside lane in a final run on a soaked track, holding off England’s Amy Hunt, who took silver in 10.98, and Australia’s Torrie Lewis, whose 10.99 was an Australian record and good enough for bronze. The margin between gold and bronze was six hundredths of a second.
The conditions made the time all the more remarkable. Rain fell through both the semi-final and the final, and sprinters generally give up ground in the wet because the track offers less grip off the blocks and through the drive phase. Hobbs ran faster anyway. Her previous best of 10.94, set at the Ostrava Golden Spike meeting in the Czech Republic in June last year, had stood as the Oceania area record. She took it down by a hundredth in about the worst weather a sprinter can be handed.
Hobbs said afterwards she had trouble believing the result. “I needed to see the result on the scoreboard because I needed it to feel real,” she told Olympics.com. “Just making the Commonwealth Games was hard enough. So to be walking away with any colour of medal, let alone a gold, is just incredible.”
She also reflected on the people who told her early on that the 100 metres was the wrong event for her. “I just think about the time I was told I shouldn’t do the 100m because it’s too hard,” she said, in comments reported by the Otago Daily Times. Speaking to 1News, she added, “And here I am making the Games let alone getting a medal. It’s crazy. It’s actually wild.”
Hobbs is 28 and grew up in Stratford, in Taranaki. She has spent most of the past decade rewriting what New Zealanders thought was possible in the shortest event on the track. In 2023 she became the first woman from Oceania to run the 100 metres in under 11 seconds, at a meeting in Sydney, and she has since collected 13 individual national titles. For a country whose athletics reputation has been built almost entirely on middle distance and distance running, on shot put and on the field events, a genuine world-class sprinter was something close to unprecedented.
The gold also settles some unfinished business. At the Birmingham Commonwealth Games in 2022 Hobbs made the 100 metres final and finished fifth. At the 2023 world championships in Budapest she missed the final by a hundredth of a second in her semi, placing tenth overall on times. At the Paris Olympics in 2024 she reached the semi-finals. Each of those results was a step up on anything a New Zealand sprinter had managed before, and each one stopped just short of the podium. Glasgow is the first time she has finished a global or Commonwealth campaign standing on the top step.
It capped New Zealand’s best day of these Games. Lewis Clareburt defended his 400 metres individual medley title in 4 minutes 8.72 seconds, finishing 2.3 seconds clear of the field, and that was his second gold of the week after the 200 metres butterfly. Lauren Bruce threw 69.82 metres to take silver in the women’s hammer, a result that made up for missing the podium in Birmingham. Erika Fairweather added another silver in the pool in the 800 metres freestyle, and weightlifter Cameron McTaggart took silver in the men’s 88 kilogram class, New Zealand’s first medal of the Games away from the swimming.
By the end of day five New Zealand had 13 medals, made up of three gold, seven silver and three bronze, and sat eighth on the overall table, according to RNZ. Clareburt and Fairweather have done most of the heavy lifting between them, but the spread is widening now that the athletics programme is under way.
These are unusual Games. Glasgow stepped in as host after the Australian state of Victoria pulled out, and the event was rebuilt on a compressed timeline into a much leaner programme of 10 sports and 215 events, running from 23 July to 2 August. Several sports that New Zealand has traditionally done well in are absent, which makes the medals in the sports that survived the cut count for more. Athletics, swimming, weightlifting and netball are all still on the schedule, and all four have delivered for the New Zealand team so far.
For Hobbs, the win lands in the middle of a season that still has a way to run, and there will be plenty of interest in what she does over the rest of the year on the European circuit. But the significance of the Glasgow result does not depend on what comes next. A New Zealand woman has never won a Commonwealth sprint title before. She has now, in the rain, from the outside lane, faster than she has ever run.
What did you make of Hobbs’ run in Glasgow, and where does it sit among New Zealand’s great track performances? Let us know in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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