Veteran Rohan Browning has regained his mantle as Australia’s 100m sprint champion, producing an equal personal best time of 10.01 seconds to pip Lachie Kennedy in a thrilling photo finish at the Australian Athletics Championships.

Kennedy ran a personal-best 10.00 in his heat win at the WA Athletics Stadium on Friday, and immediately set his sights on bettering the Australian record of 9.93 set by Patrick Johnson in Japan in 2003.

But it was veteran Browning who came up trumps in a photo finish in Saturday night’s final in Perth, equalling his career-best run from the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.

Browning’s final time of 10.01 (.001) bettered that of Kennedy 10.01 (.006) by five-thousandths of a second.

Joshua Azzopardi (10.17) finished third.

Many critics labelled Browning a spent force following some tough injury years, but the 27-year-old showed he still had plenty left in the tank.

“It felt like Tokyo all over again. It felt really smooth,” Browning said after Saturday’s thrilling win.

“I knew not to get sucked into running Lachie’s race, because he’s going to get out well.

“I just had to focus on myself. There might have only been a handful of people in the stadium tonight that believed that was possible. And you know, you only need to believe in yourself.”

Rising global superstar Gout Gout didn’t compete in the open men’s field.

Instead, he produced two runs of 9.99 in the under-20 100m sprint on Thursday, but both were achieved with illegal tail winds.

It means Gout’s personal best remains 10.17 seconds.

In the women’s 100m final on Saturday night, national record holder Torrie Lewis beat 17-year-old rising star Leah O’Brien and Bree Rizzo in a drama-filled photo-finish.

It took several minutes for the winner to be determined given the closeness of the race.

Lewis recorded a time of 11.24 (.236), ahead of O’Brien 11.24 (.240) and Rizzo (11.25).

“I’m so happy,” Lewis said after defending her national crown.

“I just said to them, ‘That was such a crazy race guys. I’m happy for both of you’. Whoever gets it, gets it.”

Olympic silver medallist Jessica Hull won the 1500m women’s national title for the third year running after going for broke with 400m to go.

The pace was slow for most of the race, but Hull was able to create enough of a gap to win in 4:11.36, just ahead of Sarah Billings (4:11.51) and Georgia Griffith (4:12.09).

“It was a very strange race,” said Hull, who was competing just days after taking part in the grand slam track meet in Jamaica.

“I think in my mind, I kind of probably thought Linden (Hall) would take up the running. In the first 200 she was boxed in on the rail pretty deep.

“I was like, ‘OK, it’s not going to be Linden and I don’t think anyone else is going to go, so just buckle up for the last 400’.”

In the men’s 1500m final, 18-year-old rising star Cameron Myers (3:34.39) held on at the death to beat Adam Spencer (3:34.57) and Commonwealth Games gold medallist Oliver Hoare (3:34.61).

-AAP