Sarah Cowley-Ross for LockerRoom
For sprint queen Zoe Hobbs, every detail counts at this week’s world champs – from her warm-up drills to her pre-race drink and the song that will power her to the start line, in her quest to finally make the 100m final. Sarah Cowley Ross outlines the details.
Hundredths of a second decide careers in sprinting.
For Oceania’s fastest woman, Zoe Hobbs, that means every detail matters – from how she rolls her feet before warm-up, to the playlist that always ends with Cameron Hayes’ Devotion.
At the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo this weekend, New Zealand’s sprint queen is chasing a place in the final – redemption after missing out by 0.01 seconds two years ago.
Tokyo will be her fourth world championship. She debuted in Doha in 2019, finishing 39th in the 100m.
Track forward to 2025 – just a year after Hobbs made her Olympic debut in Paris, reaching the semifinals and finishing 14th overall – the Taranaki-born, Auckland-based sprinter is ready to step up again.
So what does a championship day look like for Zoe Hobbs?
The 100m heats begin on September 13, the first official competition day. The eve of racing includes a warm-up and a few practice starts at the official World Athletics session in Tokyo.
It’s an opportunity for Hobbs to make herself familiar with the stadium that hosted the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games and go through her usual visualisation strategies for the coming days.
A standard warm-up for Hobbs takes about an hour – much more than a jog and some leg swings. She moves through stretching, sprint drills, stride outs, accelerations, and finally block work.
Every competition has different starting blocks, so she checks them carefully. “I like to figure out what my block heights are ‘cos I don’t want to be on the line trying to figure it out,” she explains.
After two or three starts to feel good, Hobbs sits down with coach James Mortimer – known as Morty – to write the next day’s plan. The rest of the evening is “chill”: dinner at the hotel with the Athletics NZ team before business time.
The first heat is scheduled for 6.55pm. With long hours to fill, Hobbs says she’ll “kill the day” – conserving energy until it’s time to switch on.
Breakfast at the hotel buffet is both fuel and social time with teammates. Then comes the wait. The bus schedule dictates when she arrives at the stadium, and she aims for balance: not too early to burn energy, not so late that it raises stress.
Despite their reputation for speed, sprinters begin slowly. At the warm-up track, Hobbs spends 45 minutes on foam rolling, trigger-point release, and mobility before starting her full warm-up routine.
A qualified nutritionist and coffee devotee, Hobbs used to rely on espresso at this stage – until one fateful day.
“I once turned up at the track and there was no coffee cart, so I had to Uber Eats a coffee. It got cancelled and I started to freak out. So I created an easy shift,” she laughs.
Now she sticks to Red Bull – consistent and available everywhere in the world.
If needed, physio treatment slots in here. Then the headphones go on and the jog begins.
Hobbs has kept the same playlist for three years, adding tracks as she goes. “Anything poppy with a good beat. I’ll always finish on Devotion by Cameron Hayes.”
Her warm-up schedule is written out in detail – and Morty carries a copy. “It’ll be like 5.20pm into spikes, then 5.25pm block starts,” Hobbs says. His role is simple: keep her on schedule and pump her tyres.
“Race day is about her. Getting what she needs, allowing her to escape distraction and zone in,” Mortimer says.
The warm-up track at worlds is organised chaos – athletes jostling, coaches yelling for lanes. Hobbs remembers her debut in Doha at 22, moving out of the way.
“Now I know I’ve got every right to be in that lane and hold my space. That’s what I tell myself!”
All the athletes enter the call room at the warm-up track about 55 minutes before their heat time for the 100m – their schedule is worked backwards from this specified time.
Once inside the call room (usually a big marquee), competition uniforms are checked, any contraband items are confiscated, and spike lengths are measured to ensure they’re the legal length.
It’s at this point that Hobbs will sit side-by-side with her competitors in the heat, waiting to be led out to the main stadium. There’s not a lot of chit-chat from Hobbs.
Having mixed with the world’s best on the Diamond League circuit, she knows the scene well. Still, she admits her race face is intense. “I probably look like I’m going to murder someone,” she laughs.
Hobbs’ family will be in Tokyo, just as they were in Paris. She recalls her brother Connor telling her the day before her Olympic debut that if she wanted to spot them in the stadium, they’d be sitting on the 100m straight.
“My response was, ‘I’ll just see what serves me in the moment.’ And that proved lucky, because when I stepped on to the track in Paris, a rush of emotion came flooding over me,” she says.
“This was my dream coming true – but I had to snap out of it and pull myself together.”
Hobbs’ strategy for the heats in Tokyo will be to conserve energy, flow, and qualify. Then it’s straight back to the warm-up track to do the opposite – warm down and recover for the next day.
She’ll have a light snack post-race, and then it’s a bigger meal back at the hotel to help restore and recover.
Finals competition day begins with breakfast, followed by a “primer” — three sharp gym exercises, like banded jumps, cycled twice.
“A primer is short, sharp, and all about firing up the nervous system,” she explains.
Again, Hobbs “kills the day” until evening. The first of three semifinals is set for 8.43pm. Hobbs will need to finish in the top two in her semifinal – or be in the next two fastest times – to make the final field.
Even her race kit is carefully chosen. She prefers speed suits, like the one that went viral in Paris with four million views on Instagram.
But she remembers the brutal Budapest heat of 2023, when she was initially adamant that she wasn’t going to wear a crop top option.
“It was 36 degrees, felt like 40. I’d gone with a long-sleeve speed suit and was way too hot. I ended up using [team-mate] Rosie Elliot’s crop top she’d just raced a 400m in — with ice shoved down it on the start line!”
On finals day, nothing new is introduced. “We’re not trying to change anything in the warm-up – Morty gives me cues we know work, making me feel great leaving the track.”
The written schedule will be adjusted for the semifinal-to-final process with the final set to go at 10.13pm.
Team Hobbs know it’s the semifinal in Tokyo where she needs to take her performance to another level to make the final – they’ve deliberately been focused on how she can make the transition to a championship finalist.
Hobbs knows she’s put herself in an excellent position to do so with her 10.94s personal best in June at the Ostrava Golden Spike in the Czech Republic, her first Diamond League podium at the Monaco Diamond League in July and this month’s sixth place in the Diamond League final.
It’ll be the simple cues that help Hobbs execute that she’ll repeat to herself: Focus on reaction. Move off the line as fast as possible. Stay low through transition.
As she completes her warm-up and heads back into the call room, the confident message from Mortimer will be: “You’re capable of making the final – let’s go.”
Straight after the semifinal, Hobbs will stay warm back at the warm-up track.
“I’ll keep ticking the legs over through something like low-intensive high knees, A skips, B skips – nothing too intense,” she says.
A few short, sharp blocks starts, and then it’s back into the call room to go again to find the fastest woman in the world in 2025.
As the cameras pan across the final field introductions (something that she’s had to get used to), Hobbs plans to be right in the mix.
Six years on from her senior black singlet debut, Zoe Hobbs no longer moves aside. In Tokyo, she’s ready to take her lane – and hold it, all the way to the final.
This story was originally published at Newsroom.co.nz and is republished with permission.