‘Run like a final for the first 60 metres and then have a bit of a look and see where you are.’
As usual, Sharon’s last-minute instructions were making a lot of sense.
‘Then you might be able to slow down.’
My ears pricked up at that. I knew what she meant, but this was my first individual race at a world championships. Could I hold back?
Adding to the case for the negative was the fact that conditions were absolutely perfect. If there was a nirvana for sprinters, then Osaka was it. It was stinking hot, there was a slight tailwind and the track was super fast. Tick. Tick. Tick.
The heats of the 100m were on the second morning of competition, and I felt confident there would be no repeat of the Commonwealth Games issues. This went up a level once I got down into the blocks and felt the heat off the track. Everything was perfect.
As was my start.
In what seemed like a blink of an eye I was already at the 60-metre mark. It felt amazing; I was smooth and seemingly doing it with ease.
‘Sorry Sharon’, I thought.
The last thing I wanted to do was stop this feeling of pure speed that I was experiencing, so I kept going through to the line.
As I dipped I noticed someone a few lanes across, but what really caught my attention was the clock: 11.14.
What the?
I was stunned. That was a massive personal best and it brought me within a whisker of a record I’d circled long ago – Melinda Gainsford-Taylor’s Australian record of 11.12, set back in 1994.
It only took about a minute before the excitement was replaced by distress. I was so hot. Every part of my body seemed to be burning. I managed to make it over to the mixed zone where the Australian journalists were waiting for a comment about the second fastest 100m by a woman in the country’s history.
‘It’s so hot,’ I said, before collapsing to the ground in front of them. I felt like I was going to pass out, but team doctor Tim Barbour grabbed me and immediately started putting ice packs all over my body.
My mind and body had played tricks on me because, while the race felt so easy, clearly I’d worked incredibly hard and was now paying the price. I had no energy. My body was on fire, and somewhere in the back of my distressed mind I thought about how I had to come back in nine hours’ time for the 100m semifinals. And the following morning I had the heats of the 100m hurdles.
Right there and then I made a decision. There was no way in the future I was going to do two events at a major championships; it was simply madness.
Eventually, after more ice treatment and truckloads of fluid, my body temperature came down, but I was still so tired. How I even made it back to the track that night and then managed to qualify for the semifinal by running 11.31 is beyond me.
I was actually a bit scared about what I was going to be asked to do out on the track in the next 24 hours, given how spent I was physically. Thankfully, just as the doubts were flooding in, my stubbornness and competitive edge kicked back in. It was time to click into ‘go with the flow’ mode, which I’d done so well as a junior, because the bottom line was that I’d signed up for all this. It was too late to stop, so there was no use complaining.
To put a positive spin on it, you could say I was ‘in the zone’ when I arrived at start line for the hurdles heat, but it was more like a daze. Despite seven hours’ sleep, I still felt fatigued. I was in the opening heat at 10.10 am and I’d been so wrapped up in my recovery the previous night that I hadn’t even noticed that reigning world champion Michelle Perry was in my heat. All I knew was I was in lane nine.
My hip flexors and abductors were still suffering from the personal best in the 100m, but I knew there could be no holding back given the fast conditions that were again on offer.
Being in the outside lane meant I couldn’t get a feel for the rest of the field, so I just had to do my own thing. My start was poor by my standards, and it was hard work from then on. It felt like I was in a final rather than a heat, and the time suggested that – 12.85, which was the second fastest of my career. I’d finished second behind Perry, who ran 12.72, and the times in the other heats were also super slick.
But I had to quickly switch off hurdle mode as the 100m semifinal was next on the agenda in the evening session.
My aim coming into Osaka had been to make the semifinals of both events, so anything from then on was a bonus. The problem with that was that when I was on the start line, I just wanted to compete and beat them all. That’s what I’d done in every race I’d ever run. I didn’t care who it was next to me; I always thought I could win.
Once again I started well, but it was soon apparent that these girls were in a different league and I finished last in 11.32. The winner, America’s Torri Edwards, ran 11.02 while the other semifinal was won by Jamaican Veronica Campbell in 10.99.
I soon realised this experience was invaluable, looking ahead to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. And at 20 years of age, I was in the top 16 sprinters on the planet.
My schedule had come in for some criticism at home, with Sharon’s daughter, Richelle, ringing her up in tears after my hurdles heat.
‘You have no idea what they’re saying on television about you,’ Richelle said to her mother. ‘It’s so mean and terrible.’ Apparently Jane Flemming had teed off, saying I was going to be burnt out and was receiving bad advice.
Sharon wasn’t concerned. She kept telling me I didn’t have to make any decisions yet because I was still a baby in terms of athletics. And I’d always said to her that I loved the freedom of running the 100m and the challenge of doing the hurdles. We both knew a decision was looming, but for now my challenge was to find a way to qualify in the hurdles semifinal.
I was going to have to go under my personal best of 12.71 to make the final. Every race had been so fast in Osaka that I was confident, despite having raced so much, that this could be achieved. But what’s that old saying about biting off more than you can chew? Unfortunately, that’s what happened in the semifinal.
Despite starting well, it was soon obvious that it wasn’t there. Perry won in 12.55 and I finished fifth – one spot from progressing through to the final – after clocking 12.82. Doing five races in three days had finally gotten to me.
The media were keen to find out which event I would be focusing on in the future, but I wasn’t ready to make that call.
‘I am learning now, unfortunately, after I finish my races,’ I said. ‘I have learnt not to do two races at these sorts of events. Now I know what the feeling is like to run at a world championships in a 100m and a hurdles, so next year at the Olympics I will choose one event. It will be very hard and very emotional but I will choose one event, where I am higher ranked and running better in.’
I’d managed to hide my frustration about missing out on the hurdles final quite well in front of the press, but as I walked back to the warm-up track with Sharon, it boiled over. The tears started to flow and Sharon started getting angry at me for being upset.
‘Just let me be angry,’ I screamed.
Again she was taking things personally. I wasn’t angry at her or blaming her for what happened; I was just disappointed with how I’d gone in the hurdles. Sharon couldn’t see that and, given how fried I felt, it was a volatile mix.
* * *
‘No, it’s just not good enough.’
And with that I turned on my heels and left the television interviewer and my teammates with their mouths wide open.
I was fuming.
We’d just finished second-last in the heats of the 4x100m relay, and yet when the other girls spoke afterwards they’d said it was a ‘good effort’. I was seeing red, and my anger was mainly directed at one person: Melanie Kleeberg.
I’d been the lead-off runner with Melanie at second change, which had been a disaster. She took off way too early and had to slow down dramatically just to be able to accept the baton before then having to get going again. After she passed it to Crystal Attenborough, I pulled up alongside her and screamed, ‘You took off so early. I can’t believe you did that.’
Crystal passed it to Fiona Cullen, who then crossed the line in eighth spot in a time of 43.91. Belgium had won the heat in 42.85.
After the blow-up in the interview, Melanie confronted me.
‘You embarrassed your country by going off and being angry,’ she said.
I tried to calm myself down, but was struggling to hold it in.
‘I was being truthful about how bad our team just ran,’ I said. ‘That sort of performance is not going to get us anywhere.’
The difference between my mindset and that of the other girls disturbed me greatly. We were mentally at completely different levels. I couldn’t understand why they were just happy to be out there wearing the Australian uniform. I wanted to get through the round. I wanted to make the final. I wanted to get a medal. I wanted to be the best in the world. It’s why I hated running relays. I was pleased when the biomechanical data came back on the relay and justified my spray, as it showed Melanie had taken off 4 metres early.
I was weighing up whether to head back to Europe or go home when I got the call-up for the hurdles A-race at the biggest Golden League meet of the year in Zurich. Initially I had been the reserve, but American Virginia Powell pulled out so I was elevated into the main event.
But I had one question: ‘How much prize money does the winner of the B-race get compared to last place in the A-race?’ I was told the B-race winner took home US$4000.
It didn’t end up mattering, as I ran really well in the A-race, clocking 12.74 to finish fourth behind Susanna Kallur, who’d turned the tables on Perry.
Perry had won her second world title in Osaka, clocking 12.46, but Kallur – who finished fourth in a personal best 12.51 – felt she’d been interfered with by the American in the final. Her revenge on Perry in Zurich was sweet, given the defeat meant the world champion was no longer eligible for the US$1 million jackpot at the end of the series.
I was just happy I’d earned more than US$4000 for my efforts. I still remembered how excited I was when I got my first prize-money cheque – it was a few hundred bucks for finishing third in the 200m at the Melbourne Grand Prix.
When I finally got on the plane for home, I had all the confidence in the world looking at what the next 12 months had in store. While I was still quite immature and didn’t properly comprehend the world of professional athletics, I’d learnt so much throughout 2007. I’d been in races and situations that, at such an early stage of my career, I’d never dreamed of being at.
Bring on Beijing.