After achieving her best time at the Townsville Running Festival half marathon, Cooktown’s Jess Darvell is set to take on her first World Marathon Majors event in Sydney on 30 August. Photo: Supplied.
From the Cooktown State School cross-country to now preparing for her first World Marathon Majors (WMM) event, it’s safe to say that running has become more than just a hobby for Jess Darvell.
The 23-year-old has been accepted to run the 2026 Sydney Marathon on 30 August — an incredibly lucky feat as the Australian event attracted a record number of applicants, driven by a significant rise in international interest.
This year, more than 123,000 runners entered the ballot, representing a 56 per cent increase on 2025, and bringing the acceptance rate down to about 33 per cent.
Darvell will be making full use of the opportunity by running her first full marathon at the event. Previously, she has completed four half marathons (21 kilometres) — two in Cairns, one in Mackay, and most recently in Townsville, where she achieved her personal-best time of two hours, five minutes.
“With the World Majors, the marathon is really the main event, and I think if I’m wanting to do a World Major, I’d want to do the main event, rather than the smaller parts,” she said.
“You also get to go over the Harbour Bridge in the marathons, and that’s something that I wanted to do.
“It’s my first time applying for any of the World Majors, and it’s definitely a bucket list item for me.”
The WMM series consists of the seven largest and most renowned marathons in the world, in Tokyo, Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago, New York City and Sydney, with the Cape Town Marathon to join as the eighth Major in May 2027.
Darvell said since finding a deeper relationship with running as an adult, it had become a goal to complete at least three WMM titles, though doing all of them “would be amazing”.
“I used to do cross-country when I was little. It was nothing too crazy, but I picked up running again after high school sort of as a hobby, and stuck with it,” she said.
“I think it helped with finding that work-life balance. Running for a marathon would take about four or five hours, so getting to spend a lot of time with yourself, you can work on yourself and have a bit of a mental break from work or whatever is happening in your life.”
For her first full marathon, the runner said she was not overly concerned about her finish time, instead wanting to take in the once-in-a-lifetime experience as a whole.
“I would like to be under that six-hour mark, for sure, but I haven’t spent all that much time in Sydney either, so I’d like to really take everything in,” she said.
“I’m not too concerned about jumping into a marathon, and especially with the new scenery, the whole experience itself is just so special.
“I find that when you’re running with people in an event sort of setting, you’ve got people cheering you on, you’ve got other runners supporting you, and it’s a lot more adrenaline and motivation than when you’re out running 20 kilometres in the neighbourhood by yourself.”
