National 100m champion Lachlan Kennedy has a personal best of 20.26 in the 200m. (Getty Images: Cameron Spencer)
Lachlan Kennedy will try to complete the sprint double at next month's Glasgow Commonwealth Games after nominating for the 100m and 200m on his Commonwealth Games debut.
Kennedy's personal best of 20.26 in the 200m would have won bronze at the last Commonwealth Games in Birmingham.
Australia's first 11 track and field competitors were named based on the results of the national championships in April, and the rest of the 86-strong team has now been locked in, a month before the start of the Glasgow Games.
"The Australian athletics team embodies everything we want from this Commonwealth Games campaign, world-class performers, rising stars and athletes who continue to deliver on the biggest stages," Glasgow 2026 chef de mission Petria Thomas said.
"It's an incredibly exciting and balanced squad that will make Australia proud in Glasgow."
Australia's newly flush sprinting stocks have resulted in heartbreak for Josh Azzopardi, with the 26-year-old missing out on a solo Commonwealth Games debut next month, despite finishing second in the 100m at the national championships.
At that Sydney meet, Azzopardi finished between Kennedy and ahead of four-time national 100m champion Rohan Browning.
Josh Azzopardi beat Rohan Browning in the 100m final at the national championships in April. (Getty Images: Cameron Spencer)
But Browning has been given the nod ahead of 2024 Paris Olympics running mate Azzopardi, along with Kennedy and all-conditions record holder Eddie Nketia, who will represent Australia for the first time since changing allegiances from New Zealand in December.
Browning, meanwhile, competed in the 100m at the past two Olympic and two Commonwealth Games, with his personal best of 10.01 at the 2021 Tokyo Games ranking fourth among Australians in history.
But Azzopardi's personal best of 10.09, which he ran for the second straight year at the Perth Track Classic in February, is 0.1 of a second faster than Browning's season's best of 10.19 from that national championships final, which has him ninth among Australians in 2026.
In May, Azzopardi won the 100m at the Oceania Athletics Championships for the second time in Darwin, but it was not enough to earn him a spot in the 100m event, which would have marked his first time running a solo event at a Commonwealth Games.
Josh Azzopardi became a two-time Oceania champion in May. (Getty Images: Andy Cheung)
Azzopardi was a member of Australia's 4x100m relay at the 2022 Birmingham Games — where they failed to finish their heat after Browning fell at the start of his anchor leg — and set a national 4x100m relay record with Browning, Kennedy and Chris Ius at the World Relays in May to book a ticket to the 2027 world championships.
Azzopardi and Ius are both travelling to Glasgow as 4x100m relay specialists.
Another of Australia's most competitive fields, the women's middle-distance races, left selectors with some tough calls.
Jessica Hull will run the mile and the 5,000m at the Commonwealth Games. (AAP: Dean Lewins)
Unlike Nketia, elite form in the US college scene was not enough to earn 21-year-old Hayley Kitching a spot despite having comparable 800m times to Sarah Billings and Claudia Hollingsworth, who have been added to the team after finishing behind Abbey Caldwell at the national championships.
But Billings will be the only women's runner in the 800m after Caldwell and Hollingsworth chose to prioritise the mile (1,600m).
Hollingsworth, Caldwell and Jess Hull will run the mile, with Hull also backing up in the 5,000m alongside Linden Hall and Rose Davies.