For Dr Mackenzie Little, javelin bronze at the World Athletics Championships is ‘icing on the cake’

It’s been a big week for Mackenzie Little, the athlete.

A bronze medal at the 2025 World Athletic Championships, her second in a row, was the icing on the cake for what had been a challenging year of competing priorities.

Outside of Australia, Little had only competed six times in 2025.

Off the back of a disappointing Olympics in Paris, where she finished 12th, that might have suggested a slight cooling off period between her and the sport.

But that’s not it.

Because this past week has also been a big week for Dr Mackenzie Little, the surgical resident at Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney.

“I just got my first surgical job for next year, which is so exciting,” Little told ABC Sport.

“I’m looking into ENT surgery and I’m hoping to do that head and neck surgery over the next few years.

“It’s a really competitive specialty and it will take some time, but I’m just really passionate about that.

“So it’s been a really big week, but yeah, I’m really excited about moving forward.”

The 28-year-old may be looking forward to her next few months, but Australian athletics may want to dwell on her past few days a little more before she gets back into her surgical scrubs.

Little set down a marker in Friday’s qualifying, requiring just one throw to nail a spot in Saturday’s final.

Then, on Saturday, she did it again, another big throw of 63.58 metres first up to put the rest of the field on notice.

This time though, it didn’t quite last.

First, Juleisy Angulo launched the javelin 65.12m, a massive, almost two-metre personal best to break the Ecuadorian national record in the second round.

Then, with Little sitting second for the next three rounds, Anete Sietina threw a metre further than she had managed so far this season to push the Australian down to third, the Latvian landing the javelin out at 64.64 to take silver away with a personal best.

“It feels fabulous,” Little said.

“You know, I think bronze is just all that I could have hoped for. 

“I’m so happy, even as the silver slipped from my grasp at the last second, I’ve just had the best time over the last couple of days and it’s exceeded all of my expectations.

“You can’t control that [what other people throw] … I’m thrilled for Anete.

“If you’d told me a couple of days ago that I’d be here with a medal, I’d have been thrilled.”

She has good reason to be thrilled.

As juggling a full-time medical career with an elite athletics career becomes increasingly difficult to manage, there must be times when Little wonders whether these sorts of evenings will come around much more often.

This is, after all, a woman who has to switch shifts around just to accept invitations to Diamond League events, something she said she fights “tooth and nail” to get to.

“That’s just the most brilliant part of this sport,” Little said.

“We get to travel around the world with our friends competing, living this kind of dream life.

“It’s wonderful, this season, going to new countries and competing in Morocco and Oslo and all over the world.

“However, I do have to be selective because I only have a certain amount of time, so this year it was really Diamond League or bust.

“But to be in the position that I am is just so lucky.”

And yet, the Paris disappointment did have some impact, resulting in some changes to her training schedule and a lengthy delay that lasted until just after Christmas before training could resume again.

“It took a really long time,” Little said in terms of recovering from Paris, struggling to find the motivation to drag herself out to the Olympic stadium precinct from St Leonards after a long day on the wards.

That’s no wonder.

At times, Little would be stuck in traffic for over an hour after a long day to get to Homebush for training, something she describes as being “more demoralising than anything else I can imagine”.

So, in combination with coach Angus McEntyre, they had to be “clever” to think of ways to keep her motivated, training at odd times and ensuring there would be someone else there to keep her company.

Fortunately, Little has something else to keep her grounded.

“I have so many other parts of my life that I had to lean on at that time that I had this really big disappointment in athletics [after the Olympics],” she said.

“So I was really leaning on my family and friends and work, I had such a fulfilling time at work and I am able to throw myself into that and that kind of takes away the disappointment and really builds up the rest of my confidence and identity.

“It would be too much pressure on me to compete and have that be everything.

“It’s almost a sports psychology technique to have these pillars in my identity that can hold me up and have the competition outcome as being just icing on the cake rather than all of me. 

“So I think I try to use that and I try to think that way while I’m still fighting tooth and nail for as best result as I can.”

Now, Little is a two-time world championship medallist.

That’s some impressive icing to have on the cake.

Little said she has already had “a little celebratory dinner” this week to mark her surgical residency.

Now she can celebrate even longer, even if juggling medicine and athletics continues to test her.

“Athletics and medicine will go hand in hand as long as we possibly can,” she said.