Tokyo Olympian Peter Bol visits Geraldton to support Jacko Whitby’s Kaliah Dreaming athletics squad

Olympian Peter Bol is paying a visit to the Mid West this week to see the sights and support local junior athletes.

Coach Lindsay Bunn said Bol and other athletes were due to hold a “speed session” with local coach Jacko Whitby’s Kaliah Dreaming development squad on Thursday evening.

“Jacko Whitby is a legend in our sport, he is a life member of the Australian Track and Field Coaches Association and one of the greatest Indigenous coaches ever,” Bunn said.

“Peter is coming up to support the kids. We all want to come to Geraldton to support Jacko and the juniors. We plan to support all the kids in the community.

“They’ll be going flat stick and the juniors will realise, ‘This is what it’s like to train with elite athletes’.”

Bunn, who coaches Bol along with other athletes including world junior record holder and Paris 2024 hopeful Sasha Zhoya, hoped to visit Geraldton on a “regular basis”.

He said the other athletes on the trip were State champions and he expected them to “go through to Peter’s level” in their careers.

Zhoya, Bol, South Sudanese national champion and Olympic hopeful Mangar Chuot, and other top athletes travelled to Geraldton with Bunn last year to train with Whitby’s squad.

At the Tokyo Olympics, Bol became the first Australian since 1968 gold medallist Ralph Doubell to reach the 800m final.

He also broke the Australian record in Tokyo on the way to finishing fourth.

Whitby is an Indigenous elder and founded Kaliah Dreaming, named after the word for emu in his Nhunda language, to deliver high-level athletics coaching to people in regional areas.

He has coached multiple athletes to Oceania meets, where they wear the green-and-gold uniform and represent Australia.

They include Nathaniel Franklin, Katrina Cox and Kerry Gorski.

Cox placed second in the women’s triple jump at an Oceania event in 1995, while Franklin competed in the long jump in 2004.

Gorski reached a height of 1.73m in high jump in 1999.