She won gold medals and broke records in 2025. But this Aussie high jumper’s year just got better

It was special.

Bruce McAvaney’s outstanding lifetime of work, and Nicola Olyslagers’ outstanding year, has delivered the Australians two of World Athletics’ highest accolades.

High jumper Olyslagers was declared the best field athlete in the world by the sport’s governing body at a prestigious ceremony in Monaco.

Nicola Olyslagers at the awards ceremony in Monaco.Credit: Chiara Montesano for World Athletics

And Bruce? Well, the rest of the world now reveres him with the affection Australians have long held him in, winning the president’s medal for a lifetime of work and philanthropy in athletics.

The award recognised Olyslagers’ formidable year, in which she won both the world indoor and outdoor championships gold medals, set a new Oceania record (2.04 metres), won the prestigious Diamond League and finished the year as world leader.

Olyslager’s best field athlete award was the second-highest honour possible for a female athlete. American 400m runner Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone won best track athlete of the year and the overall best female athlete gong, a title anyone would struggle to quibble with given she has not been beaten over the distance in two years.

Olyslagers and Mondo Duplantis show off their awards.Credit: Chiara Montesano for World Athletics

Sally Pearson, the only other Australian woman to win a world best award, also won best overall female athlete of the year in 2011. Sprinter Usain Bolt, the sport’s greatest ever athlete, was the best male athlete that year.

“When we were flying over to Monaco, I reflected in my journal of when I was 20 years of age. I was working in a cafe, washing dishes in the back, saving money to try and get some flights to compete internationally and I was so far away from being competitive, but in the back of that cafe, I would dream,” Olyslagers said.