Brandon Starc


Brandon Starc is an Australian high jumper. As a 16 year old he won a silver medal at the inaugural 2010 Summer Youth Olympics in Singapore with a +9cm personal best of 2.19m. Brandon won his first National Senior Athletics Championships title in 2012 with 2.28m, and was a finalist at the 2012 World Junior Athletics Championships, the 2014 Commonwealth Games, the 2015 World Athletics Championships, and the 2016 Summer Olympics. He won the Gold medal at the 2018 Commonwealth Games. Starc currently trains in Sydney, Australia, under the tutelage of his coach Alex Stewart

Biography

Starc first rose to prominence in the senior international track and field scene when, at 21 yrs of age, he made the high jump final at the 2015 IAAF World Championships, coming a creditable twelfth. Moreover, Starc confidently produced a personal best of 2.31 m at his first attempt at that height during the qualifying phase of the competition.
At the men's high jump at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro he achieved a season best of 2.29m in the qualifying stage to make the final. He entered at 2.20m in the final, clearing his second attempt, but did not progress from there.
Brandon had a quiet 2017, not qualifying for the 2017 World Championships due to a shin problem, but has scaled new heights in 2018. He won his third Australian National title on 17 February with a leap of 2.28m. He set a new personal best of 2.32m in winning gold at the 2018 Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast, Qld, Australia on 11 April. He competed in a couple of events in Japan in May, before a spectacular three month campaign in Europe. He equalled his personal best on 2 July finishing third at the Gyulai István Memorial in Székesfehérvár, Hungary. He achieved a new personal best of 2.33m winning a Diamond League meeting in Birmingham on 18 August 2018. He then set a third personal best for the year and equalled the Australian and Oceania area high jump records of 2.36m in winning the prestigious annual Eberstadt Internationales Hochsprung meeting in Eberstadt, Germany on 26 August. That is the third highest leap so far in 2018. He then won the IAAF Diamond League Final in Brussels, Belgium, on 31 August, clearing 2.33m. Starc rounded off his 2018 European-summer campaign with a second place leap of 2.30m representing Asia-Pacific in the IAAF Continental Cup in Ostrava on 8 September 2018.

International competitions

Personal life

Starc is the younger brother of Australian cricketer Mitchell Starc and brother-in-law of Australian women's cricket wicketkeeper Alyssa Healy. He collects sports shoes and is a keen photographer.