In the first-ever marathon mixed relay competition for the sport, Jemima Montag, an Australian race walker of Jewish descent, won her second bronze medal at the Paris Olympics on Wednesday.
The Spanish team that won the gold medal finished the race one minute and seven seconds behind Montag and her teammate Rhydian Cowley in 2:51:38.
Ecuador won the silver medal. With her victory, 26-year-old Montag becomes the first Australian woman to win two medals in the athletics track and field division in the same Olympics in 52 years.
Montag, who set her nation’s record in the 20-kilometer race walk in February at a competition in Adelaide, Australia, took home the bronze medal last week.
After winning her first medal, she said to the Australian news organization Nine, her motivation had decreased. Montag admitted, “To be really honest, it was hard to come back up after that first medal.”
“I was thinking, ‘Where am I going to find the motivation to get myself to go again six days later?'” and felt self-satisfied already.
But Montag said she pulled it together for her teammate.
She went on, citing Cowley, “I had to draw on one of my values of teamwork and gratitude.”
For as long as I can remember, we have been training together. I wanted to send him home with a medal since I knew this would be his last Olympics. It feels good to be able to accomplish it.
Montag is a two-time Commonwealth Games gold medallist and a silver medallist at the 2023 World Athletics Championships. He studies medicine full-time at Melbourne University.
At the age of fifteen, she was recognized in 2013 as Australia’s Outstanding Jewish Junior Sportswoman of the Year. Along with canoeists, Montag is one of at least three Jewish Australians to win a medal in Paris.1
