5

I’d never had my hair blow-dried.

This was one of a number of revelations that took my new manager, Robert Joske, by surprise. As a result I was now sitting in his house in Sydney getting the full beauty treatment. He’d brought in a stylist from Channel 9 to show me how to do my make-up and also select some new clothes.

Fashion certainly hadn’t been big on my agenda; my friends and I had all lived in long board shorts and T-shirts at school, and no-one really wore any make-up. Some of my friends started wearing some in Year 10, but I didn’t wear much. I mean, before that we didn’t even shave our legs, so we were completely out of it.

It certainly felt nice to be pampered for a change, and Robert said it was all part of the process of getting me ready for life in the public eye. That all sounded a bit daunting, but I was happy to again just go with the flow.

The day after I’d gotten back from the World Youth Championships we’d received a phone call from Robert.

‘Why do I need a manager?’ was my first response to Sharon, when she told me that he wanted to have a meeting.

We looked him up and he certainly had some impressive clients, including Australian Test cricket captain Steve Waugh and Rugby Union star George Gregan.

Robert had received a call from the boss of the Australian Institute of Sport alerting him to my progression, and was asked if he might be interested. The appeal for Robert was that we were starting at ground zero. It was the first time he’d taken on someone at first base, so to speak – his other clients had already been superstars and had come to him for a more sophisticated level of management.

So, given I now had a manager and was a world youth champion, I figured the logical next step was to become an Olympian. My first focus for 2004 was the world junior championships, which were being held in Grosseto, Italy.

The road to the Olympics had gotten harder thanks to a change in the rules regarding the 4x100m relay qualifying. For Athens, they were only going to allow the top 16 nations on times to compete. After a couple of failed attempts, the prospective Australian Olympic relay team gathered at the pre-departure camp being held for the world juniors in Brisbane. Athletics Australia had put on a meet as part of the camp and decided to send the relay team along for one last attempt.

I was a part of the senior team, but there was to be no fairytale ending again, as we failed to get the baton around. A lot of tears were shed by the four of us because we knew we’d blown it.

Thankfully I had the world juniors to focus on, although my friend Jacinta Boyd, a long-jumper from Queensland who was a member of the 4x100m junior relay team, had a conspiracy theory that I liked. We were on a different flight from the rest of the team and were flying Qantas, the Olympic team carrier, to Italy. She thought that if I ran fast enough and qualified at the world juniors, they were leaving the option of Olympic selection open. While her theory was a bit flimsy, given it was based around which airline we were using compared with the rest of the team, I was happy to entertain it in the back of my mind.

We flew to Manchester first for a competition that was the final hit-out before the championships. I was surprised at how well I ran straight off the plane, clocking 11.60 in the 100m, which was just outside my personal best of 11.57 from the previous year. The relay team also ran well, breaking the Under 20 national record.

The venue for the championships, Grosseto, was in the central Italian region of Tuscany. We stayed at a farm just outside the city. It was beautiful, with this big old house at the end of a long dirt track, although every time you went inside you had to wash all the dust off your body.

I was again competing in three events, with the 100m scheduled before the 100m hurdles and relay. I knew I was in good form as I went 11.60 again in the heats, but come the final I didn’t expect what took place.

Generally when you’re in the warm-up and then behind the blocks you get a sense of how you’re feeling and can predict how the race is going to pan out. I wasn’t feeling that great but once the gun went off I ran out of my skin.

It was quick, but when I crossed the line I wasn’t sure whether I was in the medals or not. I knew one of the American girls had won but I had to wait for the scoreboard to tell me my own fate.

It was better than I’d imaged. I’d won the bronze medal in a personal best time of 11.40. Ashley Owens from the US had won in 11.13 from her teammate Jasmine Baldwin-Foss (11.34), with little old me third.

Competing against Ashley Owens of the United States (740) who won the women’s 100m final from Jasmine Baldwin (709) second, and I won bronze at the IAAF World Juniors Championships on 14 July 2004, in Grosseto, Italy. (Photo by Michael Steele/Getty Images)

My excitement was soon tempered when I realised that in the process of producing a career-best time I’d wrecked myself. I was exhausted when it came around to the final of the 100m hurdles and raced accordingly, hitting a few early hurdles and putting together a poor race. I finished fourth and was devastated. I didn’t say a word to anyone as I went through post-event control, and once I got to the warm-up track I threw myself on the ground and burst into tears.

I couldn’t believe I’d lost the hurdles.

I was the world youth champion, and I was supposed to be the world junior champion. That was why I was there. That was what was supposed to have happened. When it didn’t, I was confused and sad.

My head certainly wasn’t in the right space for the relay, but we actually ended up running well for fifth.

Afterwards Jacinta’s father, Ray, who represented Australia in the pole vault at two Olympic Games, told me he thought my time in the 100m – which was inside the B-standard on the qualifying list – was going to be enough to get me selected for Athens. (An A-standard time means automatic selection, while B-standard is not guaranteed but makes you a possibility under the selectors’ discretion.)

‘You wait and see, there should be a letter in the mail for you about the 100m in Athens,’ Ray said.

The letter never came.

* * *

It had been a trap for so many, but Sharon was determined it wouldn’t happen to me. My personality meant I always wanted more, whether it was an extra session or just one more run-through.

She spent most of her time holding me back.

‘You’re still just a kid,’ she would always say.

I think it was her mothering instinct, because I knew she cared and didn’t want me to go down the same road as so many other promising juniors. Sharon has many stories about talented kids she’s trained who didn’t think they were doing enough, or their parents didn’t, so they either went elsewhere and did extra work or did it behind her back.

Every one of them had broken down and ultimately been lost to the sport.

I’d never set foot in a gym until November 2004, the day after I finished Year 12. That was Sharon’s rule. Up to that stage I was doing three track sessions and two or three pool sessions a week, plus some core work with the medicine ball.

Sharon’s plans for the next 12 months weren’t very exciting, but according to her it was a critical time in my development. She called 2005 a building year. My coach wanted me to train through as a senior athlete and build up my strength and fitness for the 2006 Commonwealth Games, which were in Melbourne.

The switch to the high hurdles was a factor, and Sharon went back to Roy Boyd and asked him how long he thought it would take for me to adjust.

He figured it would take me at least two years before I would be able to run under 13 seconds over the higher height.

‘Why so long?’ was Sharon’s response. She didn’t believe it would take that long, which I liked, as it showed how much faith she had in me.

I’d recently created a ‘goal book’, which I would often keep under my pillow, so at any time of the day or night if something came into my head I could write it down. Having my name in the record books for all of Australia’s sprint hurdle records – from junior level to Under 18, Under 20 and open – was now in there in big, bold letters.

The end of my schooling had come and gone without fanfare. Year 12 had been pretty much a joke, given I was hardly there and they only made me do three subjects. My teachers had figured I wasn’t going to be doing anything academically, so they made it easy for me. All I had to do was English and two sports subjects.

My progression into life as a full-time athlete was helped by the fact I had my first sponsor. Robert had negotiated a deal with footwear giant adidas, and I was blown away by the fact that they were going to pay me money. I couldn’t believe it and I had to keep going back and looking over the figure in the contract – $15,000 per year – to get my head around it.

I was so excited and told Sharon that I could pay for all of us to go to Europe. I clearly didn’t understand how much overseas flights cost and soon realised that wasn’t the case just yet.

I’d started training six days a week, but that was all I was doing. Mum didn’t want me to work because she thought it would tire me and could affect my training. Of course I agreed, but soon realised that sitting around on the couch most of the day wasn’t much fun.

The one thing I did do was train hard, and it paid off. My debut in the senior ranks resulted in me getting my own slice of history. I became the first person to double in the 100m and 100m hurdles at an Australian championship, although I was made to work for it by fellow Queenslander Fiona Cullen.

Winning the women’s 100m race during day two of the Athletics Australia Telstra A-series National Championships at Sydney Olympic Park Athletic Centre on 5 March 2005. (Photo by Mark Dadswell/Getty Images)

The 100m was first, and I just held on to take the win in 11.77 with Fiona .01 of a second behind. The next day they couldn’t split us in the hurdles, and we were both awarded the time of 13.41.

My winning ways continued a month later at the Australian junior championships in Brisbane, where I won the Under 20 100m hurdles by almost 10 metres, clocking 13.84. Everything was on track for the 100m, where I ran 11.82 in the heat to be easily the fastest qualifier for the final.

With my confidence brimming, I was focused on a slick time, given the conditions were perfect with a nice tail wind to assist the sprinters. That was the plan, until about 10 metres into the race when I tore my hamstring.

Previously, when I saw people jump in the air and carry on after tearing their hamstring, I always thought in a way they were faking it. Now I knew they weren’t. It seriously hurt. That was the first time I’d suffered an injury of that nature, and I was in agony as I limped off.

The plan was already to focus on training that year, and now we had to throw a few months of rehabilitation into the mix.

Mum certainly jumped onto the program and, as usual, went above and beyond for me. To maintain my body I was going to need massage and physio every week in the leadup to the Commonwealth Games, which was going to add another $100 to the weekly budget. We didn’t have that sort of money, so Mum decided she needed to get another job.

She already worked as a team leader in customer services at trade exchange company Bartercard in Southport. The second job was with the company that took care of the out-of-hours enquiries for Bartercard. It meant Mum worked on the phones from 6 am to 1 pm every Saturday and Sunday, and then one night during the week. It was an incredible sacrifice, working seven days a week just so I could be an athlete. I actually felt guilty about it, but nothing surprised me with my mother.

She’d worked two jobs right up until she was eight months pregnant because she wanted to save up enough money to take me over to England when she was on her maternity leave. For years she’d been baking cakes and selling scones to raise the funds to send me to various junior carnivals around the country. Her boss was a great supporter of mine and it was almost an order in their office that people had to bring in something they’d made at home. Mum would then load up a trolley with all the sandwiches, cakes and biscuits from her co-workers and go around to all the other floors in the building selling the goodies.

Thankfully I lived up to my part of the bargain and was in good shape as I approached the most important couple of months of my short career.

The Commonwealth Games selection trials were in Sydney at the start of February and I went in confident, given I’d run 11.41 at the Telstra A-series meet in Canberra just a week earlier. I was desperate to make my second senior Australian team and didn’t miss a beat, improving steadily from the heat to semifinal and then blitzing the final, winning in 11.66 from the Northern Territory’s Crystal Attenborough (11.81) with Melanie Kleeberg third (11.82).

There were no mistakes a couple of days later in the 100m hurdles, where I defended my national title by winning in 13.35 from New Zealand’s Andrea Miller (13.70).

I was pretty excited when I got back home, although my new boyfriend seemed more surprised. His name was Kieran Pearson, and we’d been in the same year level at high school but hadn’t really known each other then. He was an apprentice plumber and gas fitter and not a big track and field fan.

‘I’m going to the Commonwealth Games,’ I said.

‘What, the real ones?’

I smiled and nodded my head. ‘Yep.’

‘Wow,’ he said. ‘Are you that good?’