Morgan McDonald

Fast Facts

Sport: Athletics
Event: 5000m
Olympic History: Tokyo 2020
Highlights: Four-time NCAA Champion
Year Born: 1996
State Born: NSW

About Morgan

A member of one of Australia’s oldest clubs, Randwick Botany Harriers, Morgan McDonald was a leading Australian junior distance runner competing at the 2013 World Cross Country Championships in the under-20 race.

At the 2014 World Junior Championships in Oregon he placed 10th in the 5000m in 14:10.08. He remained in the US and headed to college to study Business, majoring in finance, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

He had good success setting PBs galore and in his second year in 2016 was fifth in the NCAA 5000m with a PB 13:29.79 and within seconds from the Rio Olympic standard. The next year he failed to qualify for the NCAAs, but by June was down to 13:15.83 (number six Australian all-time) for 5000m which earned his first senior Australian team singlet for the world championships. He ran very well, placing a very competitive seventh in his heat (13:30.73), missing qualification for the final by two places and half a second. But he respected that his opposition had much faster PBs. 

In 2018 the college allowed him to compete in the Commonwealth Games trials in Australia for the 5000m where on a very humid night we witnessed one of the great 5000m races in Australian history. Morgan won and went on to place eighth at the Games, but was injured in the process and unable to compete on the track at the NCAAs in 2018. 

In late 2018 his college hosted the NCAA Cross Country Championships which he won. The event is known as one of the toughest events to win. He went on to compile an incredible 2019 NCAA season. He won the indoor 3000m and 5000m on consecutive days, then the outdoors 5000m in June where in a slow tactical race he clocked a 52 second last lap to win against American rival Grant Fisher. He was selected for his second world championships in Doha in 2019, where again he was less than half a second from qualifying for the final. 

After a quiet 2020 in the COVID-effected world, in 2021 McDonald set PBs across a range of distance from 3000m to 10,000m, including 13:13.67 at his pet distance of 5000m. Selected for the Tokyo Olympics, it is his fourth consecutive national team senior since 2017.

In his two previous global meets (world championships in 2017 and 2019), Morgan had missed qualifying for the final by less than half a second on each occasion. 

This theme of near misses continued in Tokyo with Morgan missing the final by just one place. He was 11th in his heat in 13:37.36.