Mackenzie Little (athletics) won silver in the women’s javelin at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games with a throw of 64.27m, just 16 centimetres behind fellow Australian Kelsey-Lee Barber in one of the closest finishes in the event’s history.

Mackenzie was born in the USA, but her mother and father returned to Australia when she was just two weeks old. She started her athletics journey at Northern Suburbs Little Athletics in Sydney where she was competitive in the 400m hurdles, high jump, long jump and heptathlon before taking up javelin in high school when other events were postponed because of rain, first gaining the attention of athletics scouts by winning gold at the 2013 World Youth Championships aged 15.

Mackenzie made her senior international debut at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games defying her world no. 24 ranking by finishing eighth in the final having thrown a PB of 62.37m in qualification in one of the surprise Australian performances at the Games. PBs followed at her next two international appearances at the Eugene 2022 world championships (63.22m) and Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games (64.27m), followed by the bronze medal at the Budapest 2023 world championships. She hit another PB of 66.27m in winning the London Diamond League just a fortnight before the 2024 Olympics but was unable to replicate that form in Paris where she finished 12th with a best effort of 60.32m.

After finishing school, Little opted to take up a sporting scholarship at Stanford University where she completed a Bachelor of Science in Human Biology in 2019, also winning two NCAA and four consecutive Pac-10 javelin titles. Now back in Australia training under Angus McEntyre, she completed a Bachelor of Medicine at Sydney University in November 2023 and works at Sydney’s Royal North Shore Hospital.