Olympics 2024: Zoe Hobbs’ unusual process before the 100m semifinal

By Michael Burgess in Paris

Ahead of the biggest race of her life, sprinter Zoe Hobbs will spend up to 30 minutes cloistered in a small room with her rivals. There’s usually minimal eye contact, no headphones permitted and not much, if any conversation.

Welcome to the unusual world of the athletics call room. It’s something that would be impossible to imagine in most team sports – and many individual pursuits – but is part of the fabric of track and field, especially when there are so many events happening within a session.

“It’s tense but that’s just part of big races,” Hobbs tells the Herald. “Even in Diamond League, it can be up to 30 minutes of just sitting in a call room. You have an opening entry time and a closing entry time and you need to make sure you get into the call room within that window.”

Across the period there are different phases, from being in a tracksuit and sneakers to putting race numbers on competition kit and getting your running spikes checked for compliance.

“Throughout that whole process, you are with your race, with your competitors so it can feel quite tense. It’s just a lot of suspense in the lead-up to the race,” said Hobbs.

Zoe Hobbs from New Zealand in the women’s 100m heat. Photo / Photosport

Like every aspect of her career, she has adjusted with time and experience of big competition.

“The first couple of times it was quite intimidating,” said Hobbs. “But I’ve had lots of experience of being able to practise it. It’s just part of it.”

The 27-year-old has a standard procedure.

“I’m someone who just keeps to myself and focuses on what I need to do. And using it as a bit of recovery after the warm-up, also trying to stay warm if you need to, sometimes there are other components that you might need to consider, like a call room might not have aircon, or it might have aircon so it might cool you down more than you want.

“You can talk if you want to. Not many people do though and you are not allowed headphones,” said Hobbs. “For me, it depends on how my warm-up has gone and how long I am planning on sitting – like if it is a 30-minute or a 45-minute wait I will try to keep warm, just keep moving, get up and walk around, sometimes do some high knees to make sure things are still moving and I am not sitting on a chair the whole time.”

Despite the magnitude of what is coming on Sunday morning (NZT), Hobbs appeared relaxed and calm when she spoke with the Herald after her heat. That’s a product of preparation, planning and perseverance. Since linking with coach James Mortimer seven years ago, she has trained five or six days a week for most of that time.

“That’s probably more than 1000 sessions,” said Mortimer.”

That’s enabled incremental steady improvement and getting to compete in increasingly bigger competitions.

“In the last few years she’s definitely grown as a person and as an athlete and become more professional,” said Mortimer. “She has basically seen what it takes to get to this level. It’s about observing what the top girls do, what the top girls don’t do, making it work for her and still staying pretty grounded around the whole thing.”