A few weeks ago I was incredibly fortunate to have a good chat to highly regarded Australian Walks coach; Brent Vallance. Brent was a fantastic walker himself representing Australia in the 20km road race at the Kuala Lumpar Commonwealth Games in 1998. Unfortunately, a chronic Hamstring injury ended his career prematurely but fortunately for the walking world he turned his attention to coaching!
After completing a graduate coaching position at the AIS and majoring in coaching at university, Brent soon helped guide Nathan Deeks to his bronze in the 20km at the 2004 Athens Olympics. Brent was the official Olympics Team Coach for racewalking on that trip and has been at every Olympics since! Other walkers he took on around this time included; a young, Jared Tallent and Adam Rutter, amongst others. In this chat, I really enjoyed quizzing Brent on his and Jared’s journey together as coach and athlete to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. We open the chat discussing how Brent monitored Jared’s training load.
From 2006 to 2012, Brent was the AIS Chief Coach for Racewalking and took the Australian walks program to new heights. He took teams overseas each year, organized training camps and helped foster the development of the Australian walking program. He is highly sought after, both locally and overseas, as a presenter. And of course, today he continues to currently coach a number of world class race walkers, including;
- 2018 20km race walk Commonwealth Games Gold medalist Jemima Montag.
- 2019 IAAF World Championships Bronze medalist 20km race walk, 2019 European Champion; Perseus Kalstrom – Sweden.
- 2x Olympian/Lithuania national record holder 20km walk (Brigita Virbalyte – Lithuania.
- 2x Olympian and New Zealand record holder (3000m, 10,000m, 20km and 50km race walk) Quentin Rew – NZ
- Olympian and 5x World Cup representative (Rhydian Cowley – Australia)
- 2019 World University Games bronze medallist (Anežka Drahotová – Czech Republic
