Peyton Craig runs personal best in Olympic 800m semi
Teenage middle-distance star Peyton Craig has taken enormous self-belief from going within a whisker of becoming just the second Australian man in more than half a century to contest an Olympic 800m final.
Craig, 19, ran a tactically-astute race on Friday in Paris that belied his inexperience on the world stage, stopping the clock in a personal best time of one minute 44.11 seconds in sixth place.
It was easily the quickest of the three semi-finals, so fourth would have been good enough to earn the Queenslander a spot in the final on Saturday night.
"What's really satisfying is I know I gave myself every shot - I didn't put myself in a bad position in the race at all," said Craig, who also dabbled in swimming, triathlons and rugby league at a high level as a kid before deciding to focus on the track.
"With 100 metres to go I genuinely thought I might have gotten past those guys and it just happened that the Spanish guy pulled out in front of me and probably checked my run a little bit.
"But I emptied the tank, ran a PB and you can't ask for much more than running your lifetime best in a semi-final.
"I'm still so raw to the sport and I know with a lot more work I can be really quite competitive on the world stage.
"So it definitely lights the fire that was already burning and it's just like pouring petrol on the flame."
Kenyan Emmanuel Wanyonyi led all qualifiers in 1:43.42.
Craig will now turn his attention to next month's world juniors in Peru.
"My goal is to win world juniors and I know after this Olympic experience that I'm good enough," he said.
"It's a matter of executing, running the right way.
"I had a motto here to give myself an opportunity to do something special ... and I'm going to carry that through to world juniors."
Three years ago in Tokyo, Peter Bol became the first Australian man since Ralph Doubell won gold at the 1968 Mexico City Games to contest an Olympic 800m final.
Bol and national record holder Joseph Deng both had disappointing Paris campaigns, being run out in the repechage round without firing a shot.
National record holder Lauren Ryan ran on gamely to finish 13th in the women's 10,000m final won by Kenyan Beatrice Chebet in 30:43.25, just ahead of surprise silver medallist Nadia Battocletti from Italy and Dutch star Sifan Hassan.
Ryan was in the top four throughout the opening half of the race and even took a turn at the front with 12 laps to go before being swamped by the big guns.
She clocked a time of 31:13.25.
The only Australian woman to finish higher in an Olympic 10,000m final was Eloise Wellings, who was 10th in 2016.
Connor Murphy could only manage 16.30m in the triple jump final - well shy of his PB of 16.90m - and finished last.
The 22-year-old was Australia's first Olympic triple jump finalist since his coach and father Andrew, who was 10th at the 2000 Sydney Games.
Fellow Olympic debutants Camryn Newton-Smith and Tori West were 19th and 20th in the heptathlon.
Belgian Nafissatou Thiam won a record third Olympic title with 6880 points ahead of British two-time world champ Katarina Johnson-Thompson (6844).