Ella Connolly (athletics) placed sixth in the women’s 200m at the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games, the first Australian to reach the final since Lauren Hewitt won bronze in Manchester in 2002. She then ran the 4x100m relay final and helped the team to fourth place. Eleven months later that Australian team was elevated to the bronze medal following the disqualification of winners Nigeria for a doping violation.

Ella started competing in athletics aged 10 and enjoyed instant success, winning the 100m at the 2010 National Primary School competition. Selected for the 2017 Youth Commonwealth Games in the Bahamas, she won medals in the 200m and 400m just days after her 17th birthday. This led to her first Australian senior team at the London world championships in the 4x400m relay later in the year. She missed selection for the 2018 Commonwealth Games in her home state of Queensland due to hamstring injury, only to return later that year to achieve fourth in the 400m at the 2018 World Under-20 Championships. She competed in the heats of the 200m at the Eugene 2022 world championships two weeks before the Commonwealth Games but had to withdraw from the event in Budapest the following year due to a hamstring injury.

2024 produced further outstanding results. She was part of the Australian quartet that broke the long-standing 4x100m relay Australian record in the Bahamas (42.83) which qualified the team for the Olympics and ended a 24-year sprint relay drought for our women. She claimed the Oceania 100m title in June and made her Olympic debut in Paris but did not advance out of the heats of the 100m and 4x100m relay.

Gary Patterson coached Ella at Deception Bay Athletics for over a decade before moving to the Gold Coast in 2021 to train under Atlanta 1996 Olympian Mark Ladbrook. She is now with Sydney coach Andrew Murphy.

Outside of athletics, Connolly studies secondary teaching at Griffith University.