Athletics
Fleeing the Sudanese civil war, Peter Bol came to Australia with his family when he was just eight years old. Almost two decades later, the Olympian would go on to articulate how he felt when he first stepped off the plane in Toowoomba, Queensland.
“It was completely different, it was just nice, even the air was fresh and it was just a feeling – pretty much the same feeling if you just made it to the Olympics – a feeling of excitement,” Peter Bol reflected during an interview with the Guardian.
The realisation, incidentally, came shortly after Bol had made the men’s 800m final at Tokyo 2020, thereby becoming the first Australian to qualify for the Olympic medal race in the event since 1968. En route, he had bettered the national record twice - once in the heats and then in the semi-finals.
Bol’s run in the medal race in Tokyo fell just short of a podium finish - 0.53 seconds to be exact. Despite heartbreakingly missing out on a medal, the Sudan-born Aussie had already scripted a glorious chapter in middle-distance running for his adopted country.
Besides his successes on the athletics track, Bol also holds a degree in construction management from Curtin University and has briefly worked as an engineer. He has also completed a business course at the University of Melbourne.
Bol is often seen as a role model for the Sudanese diaspora and immigrants in general. The Olympian himself, however, isn’t much concerned with the tags.
“I don’t think people should be seen as a refugee or a migrant or something like that,” Bol said. “It’s almost like a trophy – your identity is where you come from. If people want to associate it with bad things – yes there are bad things, bad struggles, but who doesn’t go through bad struggles and what not?”
Where was Peter Bol born
Peter Bol was born on February 22, 1994, in Khartoum, the capital of Sudan. His father Abdalla Bol hailed from what today is South Sudan and his mother, Hanan Kuku, was from North Sudan.
The Bol family, however, had to flee their country when Peter was just four due to the Second Sudanese Civil War. After spending four years in Egypt, the Bol family obtained humanitarian status through the UNHCR and immigrated to Australia, eventually settling in Perth.
A natural athlete, Bol joined St Norbert College, a prestigious private catholic school in Perth, on a basketball scholarship.
When he was 16, Bol’s life took an unexpected turn when Helen Leahy, a teacher from Peter’s school, found herself short of 400m runners during a sports carnival. ‘Miss, Peter can run!’ chimed one of Leahy’s students and so, Peter was summoned.
The teenage basketball player ran through the competition in the 400m before registering an even more commanding win in the 800m.
Peter’s talent on the track was apparent and Miss Healy, along with her father Brian Moore, decided to help nurture the youngster and bought him running shoes. They also enlisted him in an athletics club and later financed his participation in national-level competitions.
Peter initially agreed to take up athletics, thinking it’d help his fitness and consequently his basketball career. Sustained success in athletics, however, soon prompted a change of track.
Peter Bol’s records and medals
Peter won the national junior 800m title in 2013 and kept improving his timings. By 2015, he had moved to Melbourne to train under revered track coach Justin Rinaldi.
In 2016, he breached the 1:45.80 mark - the erstwhile Olympic entry standard for men’s 800m - twice to earn a ticket to the Rio Summer Games.
Within six years of taking up the sport, Bol made his Olympic debut in Brazil but the youngster was overwhelmed with the sheer magnitude of the occasion and was knocked out early after finishing sixth in his heat, clocking a disappointing 1:49.36.
Bol missed out on the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games held on home soil due to an injury but represented Australia at the 2017 and 2019 World Athletics Championships in London and Doha, respectively.
Though he left it late, Bol managed to secure his entry to Tokyo 2020, which was held in 2021 due to COVID-19, and put on a show to remember in Japan.
He produced a sensational 1:44.13 in the heats to break the previous national record of 1:44.21 set by Joseph Deng, Bol’s training partner and fellow Australian of Sudanese origin, at the 2018 Monaco Diamond League.
The following day, Bol improved his timing to 1:44:11 to qualify for the final. No Australian men’s 800m runner had managed to qualify for the final at an Olympic since Ralph Doubell’s world record-setting gold medal run at the Mexico 1968 Summer Games.
In a highly tactical final, Bol clocked 1:45.92 to finish fourth. Though there were no medals for Bol at the end, it was the best finish in a track event by an Australian man at the Olympics since Darren Clark came fourth in the 400m final at Seoul 1988.
Only Edwin Flack (gold medallist in 800m and 1500m at Athens 1896) and Ralph Doubell have managed to win individual Olympic medals in men’s track events for Australia to date.
Bol carried his form into the next year and improved his personal best and national record to 1:44:00 to win the Paris Diamond League 2022. It also stood as the Oceania record in the men’s 800m before Bol’s good friend Deng reclaimed his national mark with a 1:43:59 run in an athletics meet in Lyon, France in 2023.
The year also saw Bol clock 1:45.51 to finish seventh at the 2022 World Championships in Eugene, Oregon. He is the only Australian man to ever qualify for the 800m final at the worlds.
Two weeks later Bol claimed silver - his first major international medal - at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games with a time of 1:47.66.
In July 2023, Bol clocked 1:44.29 at an athletics meet in Barcelona, breaching the qualifying mark for both the Budapest World Championships 2023 and Paris 2024 Olympics.
Bol's run in the men's 800m at Paris 2024 ended in repechage. He is also a three-time national champion in the men’s 800m.
Peter Bol achievements and personal bests
- Won silver medal at Commonwealth Games 2022 in Birmingham
- Personal best in men’s 800m - 1:44.29 (previous national and Oceania record)
- Second-fastest Australian in men’s 800m
- Three-time Australian national champion in men’s 800m
- Only Australian to reach the men’s 800m final at the World Athletics Championships
- First Australian man to make men’s 800m finals since 1968
- Soon-to-be three-time Olympian