Cheer our athletes on as they go for gold!

WITH the Paris Olympics set to begin early tomorrow morning, two Ballarat locals will be part of the more-than four hundred selected to represent Australia.

The ‘king of Ballarat,’ Yual Reath, will be competing in the men’s high jump, and former Ballarat Sportsperson of the Year, Kathryn Mitchell will be taking to the field in the javelin competition.

This is Mitchell’s forth Olympic games after first picking up a javelin at 17 years old.

Originally from Casterton, she was inspired to begin athletics to follow the footsteps of her younger sister, and initially was a long and triple jumper.

Mitchell joined the Eureka Athletics Club in Ballarat and competed in the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games and made her Olympic debut in 2012 in London

She made it to the final eight in Rio in 2016 and went on to compete in Tokyo in 2021.

Mitchell is currently ranked 15th in the world for women’s Javelin throw.

For 24-year-old Reath, Paris will be his first Olympics after recently stopping his day job as a landscape gardener to focus on high jumping.

Originally from South Sudan, Reath and his family lived in Egypt for 18 months before they travelled to Australia when he was six or seven years old.

Reath began taking high jump seriously in his teens.

He is ranked number one in Australia and number 10 in the world, with a personal best of 2.30 metres that he reached on the Gold Coast in April.

The women’s javelin throw competition will begin at 6.25pm on Wednesday 7 August and the final will be at 3.40am on Sunday 11 August.

Men’s high jump qualification will begin at 6.05pm on Wednesday 7 August before the final at 3.10am on Sunday 11 August.