By ARCHITECTURAL OPULENCE AND industrial disorder coexist at the Luminare luxury apartment building in the affluent inner-city Brisbane suburb of Newstead. The building’s diamond-sculpted facade, luminous bronze glass and curved concrete cantilevers supply the first quality. The perimeter of bustling construction sites accounts for the second.
In between the Luminare and the construction sites are trees that dot the surrounding avenues. These trees, which are some of the few of their kind in the area, are populated by a vast array of birds – mostly spindly little sparrows and finches. These birds like to inspect the grilles of recently arrived cars, in search of a feast of splattered insects. They don’t discriminate between a shiny new Porsche Cayenne or a Mazda 3 on its last legs – although, given the tax bracket of most of the area’s residents, the former is more common. On a particularly humid day in May, a pair of sparrows is inspecting the grille of a Kia Sorrento, the car that brought Lachlan Kennedy to his Esquire cover shoot.
Kennedy possesses both boyish good looks and the exuberant personality that can be expected of a Gen Z sports star with the world at his feet. The self-assuredness of someone unaccustomed to hearing the word no. On the day of our shoot, he’s carting around the suitcase he was given for the 2024 Olympics, branded with the Australian Olympic team logo. It is a thing of beauty, bestowing upon its owner an air of quiet grace. It’s more subtle than a sign that says, ‘Hey! This guy is an Olympian! But it has the same effect. Kennedy says this is the first time since the Olympics that he’s used it because he doesn’t like the attention it would presumably attract. He doesn’t specify why this was the occasion that made him break it out.
He’s just back from Botswana, where he guided the Australian 4×100 relay team to a fourth-place finish at the World Athletics Relays, a qualifying event for next year’s world championships. On his wrist is a Longines Conquest. While he’s at the Luminare to be photographed wearing a number of Longines watches, the Longines Commonwealth Games athlete has proven worthy of his title and brought his personal daily wearer. The model is “a good blend of class, but also comfort,” he says, adding that he’s ordered another that is “already on the way”.
I go into every race with the mentality that I am better than everyone else there, that this is my race to lose, that I deserve to win, and that no one works like me."
In the grooming chair in the Luminare’s top-floor suite, Kennedy’s tightly slicked hair and strong jawline make him reminiscent of a leading man of Hollywood’s Golden Age. The Longines HydroConquest fixed to his wrist only adds to the picture. When a member of our crew announces that they’re departing to collect some breakfast, Kennedy remarks that he could “absolutely smash some fruit right now” . . . and the image fades. For as easy as it is to saddle Kennedy with absurd expectations and cast him as a future Olympic champion, it is equally easy to forget that he is still only 22 years old.
Make no mistake, though: Kennedy doesn’t mind if you cast him as a future Commonwealth Games medallist or even an Olympic champion. While a regular 22-year-old might be overburdened by the weight of such expectations, Kennedy welcomes them, insisting that the pressure only fuels his ambition. This you can attribute to his supreme sense of self-belief, which underpins everything he does.
I travelled to Brisbane expecting to find chink in the seemingly impenetrable barrier of self-confidence Kennedy has constructed around himself – a quality I’d noted when I first met him six months earlier. Suffice it to say that there isn’t one. Kennedy’s belief that he can be the world’s best is so strong, so absolute, that the very idea of failure is anathema to him. And he isn’t afraid to tell you so.
“I go into every race with the mentality that I am better than everyone else there, that this is my race to lose, that I deserve to win, and that no one works like me,” he tells me later. “That pure confidence, I think, is a big part of my success. In a race like the 100 metres, there really is no room for error. A hesitation can decide whether you’re first or eighth, so having that confidence and that willingness to back yourself can make a huge difference.”
In her 1968 collection of essays titled Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion wrote that one of the mixed blessings of being in your early twenties is “the conviction that nothing like this, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, has ever happened before”. For the most part it is a shrewd observation – but there are always exceptions. When you are Lachlan Kennedy, for example, you have reason to believe that your experiences are, if not unique, then it least vanishingly rare.
Kennedy is the national champion over 100 metres and boasts a personal best of 9.96 seconds, making him one of just two Australians ever to go sub-10 and the second-fastest Australian of all time (behind Patrick Johnson). He has already experienced the spectacle that is the Olympics as a member of the 4×100 relay team that set a new Oceanian record at the 2024 Games. And he took silver at the 2025 World Athletics Indoor Championships in the 60-metre event.
It’s the kind of CV most athletes would be happy to look back on at the end of their career. The fact that Kennedy has already accomplished so much before his 23rd birthday is made even more remarkable by how much room he believes he has to improve.
THE OPENING SCENE of our shoot positions Kennedy astride a marble-edged pool table with mint-pastel felt. Above him is a chandelier. Behind him, a cast of a crocodile skull. In between shots, he checks the score of NBA playoff games – his beloved Oklahoma City Thunder are pursuing a second-straight title. It’s a terrific view from our perch on the top floor of the Luminare, overlooking the snaking Brisbane River and the area of the city where Kennedy was raised.
Kennedy grew up in South Brisbane. His father is the CEO of a real estate company and his mother is an accountant. “They were both self-made and are the hardest-working people I’ve ever met,” he says. By his own description, Kennedy’s upbringing was “more towards upper class”. Though he never lived anywhere like the Luminare, he did attend good schools and receive strong sports coaching from an early age. He played rugby union as a kid and reached junior representative level, but by his own admission, he had both the primary strength and shortcoming of the archetypal winger: blistering speed and an aversion to defence.
By the time he hit 17, his rugby coach suggested a lane change. At first, Kennedy was hesitant. “I told him no,” he says. “If he hadn’t kept pestering me about it, I probably wouldn’t be where I am now.” At his first major meet, he came third in the open division for all of Queensland, and a new path presented itself.
How close was Kennedy never to taking up track? “Dude, very close,” he says, as if realising it for the first time himself. “That’s why I always say you’ve got to take every opportunity that comes your way, because you never know what could come from it. Trying out track was just a spur of the moment decision which led me to where I am now.”
Starting a new sport from scratch at 17 meant he had some catching up to do. “I hadn’t grown up doing Little Athletics or learning how to sprint,” he says, “so my curve of development and improvement had to be a lot steeper.” In a sport where the top athletes typically start training in early childhood and peak in their mid-twenties, some might see this as a disadvantage. Kennedy characteristically chooses to avoid that negative framing. “If you think about it, it means my running age is still very young,” he says. “I’ve only been doing this for about five years or so and I’m already at this level.”
He is, indeed, on an upward trajectory. Over the last 18 months his 100-m personal best has fallen from 10.17 to 9.96, and he’s confident it will keep trending downwards. Reflecting on the race in which ran a 9.96, he’s unwilling to pat himself on the back too heartily. “I was able to execute the race plan well enough to get that time, but I wouldn’t say it was a perfect race by any means,” he says. “I’m very, very confident I’ll be able to go faster.”
When I ask what, precisely, a perfect race would look like, Kennedy demurs, explaining that it’s something you feel rather than think about. “When I’m running, I don’t really have any time to think,” he says. “It’s sort of like driving a car – you’re not thinking about putting your foot on the accelerator or turning the steering wheel, you just do it. I’m not really thinking about putting one foot in front of the other. I’m sort of just yelling at myself, like, Come on, push yourself. A bit of positive self-talk.”
Now, Kennedy has his eye on one of the longest-standing records in Australian athletics: Patrick Johnson’s time of 9.93, set 23 years ago. In a sport like track, where every generation of athletes benefits from more advanced sports science, equipment and training techniques, it is rare for a record to stand for so long. Typically, Kennedy doesn’t believe the record will last for much longer. “I’m 99 per cent sure it’s going down this year,” he says. “I’m going to go lower than 9.93. If anyone else can as well, that’d be great, but I’ll have it when it’s all said and done.”
"There’s no subjectivity in sprinting because fast is fast at the end of the day, and you can’t say that I’m not fast. There’s no better feeling than proving people wrong. It fuels me."
It is, in case you hadn’t noticed, an exciting time in Australian sprinting. Besides Kennedy, the nation’s other young record-breaker is 18-year-old Gout Gout, who bettered what was previously the longest-standing national record in athletics when he smashed Peter Norman’s 200-m benchmark back in 2024. At this early stage in his career, Gout has mostly chosen to focus on the 200, while the 100 is Kennedy’s specialty. Consequently, the two rarely meet in competitive events. When they have lined up against each other, however, it’s Kennedy who’s gotten the better of Gout, defeating him in the 200 at both the 2025 and 2026 Maurie Plant Meets in Melbourne.
“I think it is a rivalry, but I also think it’s a good friendship,” says Kennedy of his relationship with Gout. “It’s good to have someone of his calibre to run against. It’s like a- rising-tide-lifts-all-boats situation. I really just want him to keep progressing, keep running fast, and together we can spearhead this Australian sprinting movement and show the world that Australia is one of the top sprint nations.”
Kennedy’s competitive nature means he can’t subdue a braggadocious follow-up statement. “I’ve been able to get the better of him most of the times we’ve run, and I plan on it staying that way,” he says, only half joking. “I don’t plan on letting him beat me. But hey, I’d love to see him try.”
Kennedy has enough confidence to Bradman his batting grip’s wrong, but at this early stage in his career, that confidence is yet to be truly tested. An opportunity will present itself soon enough, with his biggest test yet just around the corner.
KENNEDY IS IN the driver’s seat of his Kia as we move from the Luminare to our second location, the athletics track at the University of Queensland. He’s familiar with the place, as it was once his uni before he transferred to Griffith University, where he’s completing a bachelor’s degree in engineering and business. I’m in the passenger seat peppering him with questions while he tries to keep his focus on the road. At one point, just before we cross Brisbane’s go-between bridge, a motorcyclist cuts us off before suddenly slowing down, causing Kennedy to raise an arm and furrow his brow in consternation. “Did you see that f**king guy?” Kennedy queries. “What the hell was that?”
To fashion a metaphor out of the situation, you could say that Kennedy can’t quite cut through traffic like he can his competitors on the track. Although perhaps what just happened is more like a lane violation. Kennedy isn’t too familiar with being slowed down or stuck behind someone. That’s partly because he hasn’t competed with the world’s best at a major, circle-it-on-the-calendar event. He didn’t qualify for any individual events at the 2024 Olympics, and an injury kept him out of the 2025 World Championships. Many of his early victories have come against domestic competition, and his win at the 2025 Kip Keino Classic in Kenya came in a race where none of his competitors went sub-10. By comparison, the winning time at the 2025 World Championships was 9.77. At the 2024 Olympics, it was 9.79.
The reality is, we’re yet to see how Kennedy fares against the world’s best. The Commonwealth Games could be our first chance. While the heavyweights from the US won’t be there, athletes from sprinting powerhouses like Jamaica, South Africa and Botswana will be. The winning time in the 100 at the last Commonwealth Games was 10.02; Kennedy has no doubt it will take a faster time than that to win gold in Glasgow.
“I know the winning time will be faster because I’m going to be running faster than that,” he says. “Hopefully, I’ll be in my best form, because I want to win the 4×100 as well. I think we’ve got the guys to do it.”
All the greatest athletes have moments of failure. The best ones see them as learning opportunities. Michael Jordan had playoff losses to the Detroit Pistons and Boston Celtics before becoming a six-time NBA champion. Likewise, Kennedy’s beloved Thunder endured multiple playoff eliminations before winning their first championship last year – though Kennedy’s favourite player, Russell Westbrook (now a Sacramento King), remains ring-less. Even Usain Bolt had disappointing results at his first world championships and Commonwealth Games. While Kennedy is yet to face a truly crushing setback, losing is an inevitable part of every sport.
So, what happens when Kennedy loses? Does his aura of confidence slip? “I just blame my coach,” he says, with a chuckle. “I’m just kidding. That’s sport. There’s winning and losing. I’m lucky that I do win most of the races I run, but you can’t win every race. You’ve got to be able to take away good things from the losses. I’m allowed to be annoyed at the outcome, but I don’t like to dwell too much on the bad results.”
Does he ever doubt himself after falling short? “No,” he says bluntly. “I’ve never once gone into a race thinking, I’m going to lose. I’ve gone into a race thinking, Damn, I’m up against some dogs here, but those moments just make me feel like I belong. Even then, I’m still thinking I’m the best one out there. Even against world champions and Olympic medallists.”
Kennedy’s unshakeable belief in himself could harvest among observers a desire to see him knocked off his perch. For as likeable as Kennedy is, we are a nation with a well-documented aversion to tall poppies. One particularly vocal critic of Kennedy’s is Erin ‘Spider’ Brown, an American former sprinter who competed at the collegiate level and has amassed around 250,000 followers across TikTok and Instagram. Brown’s videos primarily take aim at Australian sprinters for what he argues are fake or inflated times. Kennedy laughs when asked about Brown. “He’d probably say anything I run is a fake time. If I won Olympic gold he would say it’s because no one showed up. Weakest Olympics ever. All that.”
The criticism doesn’t appear to bother him. “You’re not going to be able to please everybody,” he says. “There’s no subjectivity in sprinting because fast is fast at the end of the day, and you can’t say that I’m not fast. There’s no better feeling than proving people wrong. It fuels me. No one really talks smack anymore because I feel like I’ve proved them wrong – except Erin. So, shout-out to him for keeping the bit going. He makes some funny stuff.”
For all the benefits his growing fame has brought, Kennedy’s career is still reducible to a brutally simple reality: lane, gun, finish line. Sprinting deals only in absolutes. And that, perhaps, is why he carries himself with such conviction. Beneath his charisma and growing renown lies the knowledge that he is judged by the simplest metric possible. But as he says, fast is fast. And Lachlan Kennedy is very, very fast.
