‘We hate you by the way, just to let you know.’ My training partner, Andrea, and I were letting Sharon know our thoughts ahead of what we knew was going to be a brutal training session. It was the session from hell, starting with a 300m time trial, followed by 3x250m sprints.
I only got through two of the sprints before I headed to the bathroom. It was so hot that I just went straight to the shower, still fully clothed, and vomited. I seriously felt like I was going to die.
Welcome to base training.
I wish you could go through the year without doing that sort of training and just be fast all the time, but that’s not how it works.
One of the secrets to my success had been my appetite for training and unwillingness to take shortcuts. Sharon estimates I might have only missed a handful of sessions in our whole time together. I’d always enjoyed training, and even when I first started I showed I was willing to make sacrifices. While my friends were going out to parties at high school, I would stay home as I knew I had training the next morning. This was my own choice – no-one was forcing me to do it – but I’d been quick to realise that becoming the athlete I wanted to be required doing the hard yards.
I’d had two weeks off after the world indoors and had really let my hair down, particularly on the food front.
Chocolate, ice-cream, raisin toast, peanut butter sandwiches … all the yummy stuff I was not normally allowed to touch was on the agenda. I made the most of it because I knew I wouldn’t be doing it again until September.
The obsessiveness that had dominated my thinking regarding food the previous year was no longer a problem. I understood my approach had been dangerous, and I’d now found a healthy balance. I’d actually come to the realisation of how much of a problem it had become just before the world championships and had alerted Sharon to how I was feeling. While it hadn’t affected my performance, it was a mindset that I knew wasn’t sustainable in the long term, and I was glad I’d managed to work my way through it.
After two months of hard work, I was climbing the walls waiting for the calendar to click over to June so I could get on the plane to Europe. Everything had gone according to plan. I was fit and healthy, which had been the first box to tick. Now I had to transfer that to the racetrack.
That enthusiasm got zapped a little bit by the 29 hours of travel to Oslo for my first Diamond League race. I was pleasantly surprised with my heat run of 12.59, but the problem was the final wasn’t for another 90 minutes.
By that stage the jet lag had kicked in, and I actually felt like passing out in the warm-up. My eyes were all red and I was questioning whether I was physically up for the task.
The start to the final was a mess. First Kristi Castlin took forever to get ready on the blocks and then put her hand up just as we were about to go. Then heptathlete Jessica Ennis false-started, which delayed it again and got me more and more frustrated.
When the field finally got away, I didn’t feel that great throughout the race and was happy to get the win, but I wasn’t expecting the time – 12.49. How the hell did I do that? I looked up into the stand at my agent and shook my head.
I’d been nervous about my opening race, and it was good to send a message to the rest of the girls, reminding them who was the boss. Castlin had finished second in 12.56 with Tiffany Porter third (12.70).
As I cooled down, though, my back started to stiffen noticeably. The plane trip and then two races straightaway wasn’t ideal. My next race wasn’t for two weeks, which gave me plenty of time to get my bearings and, more importantly, to manage my body.
My next race was at a low-key meet in Nivelles, a small village in the middle of Belgium, and a number of my Australian teammates were also competing there. In the 100m I was matched against Melissa Breen and I was very happy with the race, which I won in 11.20 – my fastest time for more than a year. There wasn’t much competition in the hurdles, which was why I was pleasantly surprised with my winning time of 12.52.
The stakes went up a notch for my next outing, which was at the stadium where it had all started for me nine years earlier. Back then I was a teenage relay runner; now as I lined up for the Diamond League meet in Paris I was the reigning world champion and the fastest hurdler in the world.
The excitement of being back at one of my favourite tracks had the adrenalin pumping. It was channelled in the right direction as I started brilliantly and, despite clipping a hurdle mid-race, kept my unbeaten run going. As I crossed the line I instantly looked at the clock and then screamed in delight. I’d just run 12.40 – the third fastest time of my career.
Winning the 100m hurdles at the IAAF Diamond League athletics meeting on 6 July 2012 in Paris. (Photo by Ian Walton/Getty Images)
I grabbed the winner’s flowers from the official just a few metres past the finish line while still in stride and kept going straight to the crowd, where I flung them up into the stand. How good was that?
I was bouncing around on the track because I couldn’t control my excitement. I’d won easily from Virginia Crawford (12.59) and Tiffany Porter (12.74). And I’d done it while clipping a hurdle. Imagine if I hadn’t? Then that was a 12.3 race.
With a month to go until the Olympic Games, I was at the top of my game.
Some of the fantastic fan mail I received from children around Australia who were supporting my quest to win gold at the London 2012 Olympic Games.
* * *
I didn’t want to be there.
The Croydon Park Hotel had never been a favourite. It was where we stayed each year for the London Grand Prix because it was near the Crystal Palace track. But the hotel was old and loud, to the point where you could hear everything that was going on in the rooms next to you.
I was already a bit anxious about my final race before the Games because my back had been really stiff in the days after Paris. The conditions when we got to the track didn’t help my mindset, given rain was falling and it was mayhem at the warm-up track. There was a wheelchair race on before the opening round of the hurdles, so two lanes of the track were cordoned off for them, which left four lanes for 16 hurdlers to warm up.
It was a disaster.
Sharon was putting some hurdles out for me, but there were people in the way. Then I wasn’t happy with the hurdles’ position and was trying to move them, so we were both getting cranky at each other. In the end I warmed up over three hurdles instead of the normal four, and then when I got out to the track I was still a bit distracted as I set up my blocks.
Then without really realising it, I broke my routine. Normally I’d practise a start out of the blocks and just go three or four steps before stopping and coming back. I’d then repeat the process, but rather than stop, I’d continue on and go over one hurdle. It was what I’d done hundreds of times.
Not this time.
Instead of pulling up after four steps, I continued on and went at the hurdle. The problem was I didn’t have the speed I normally would have, and as a result my lead leg went under the hurdle. In what almost felt like slow motion, my body flipped over the hurdle and I fell headfirst onto the track. I managed to get my hands down first and then slid all the way down, almost coming to a rest underneath the second hurdle.
What the hell just happened?
‘Wooooooaaahhhhhhh,’ I heard the crowd go up.
I was so embarrassed and quickly got to my feet. An official walked over to see if I was all right. ‘Calm down and take a deep breath,’ he said.
I just wanted to get back to the blocks and do another start. I quickly checked them and then took off at a million miles an hour. There were no problems this time as I sailed over the first and then a couple more just to make sure there were no issues.
But as the starter called us up for the start, I could feel that my back – which had been an issue the whole time I’d been in Europe – hadn’t appreciated my little accident.
Kellie Wells was in my heat and we were alongside each other the whole way before I managed to get the dip in first to win in 12.53, just .01 of a second ahead of the American.
I quickly made my way back out to the warm-up track because I knew I was going to need some treatment. For the first time I had my own physio, Britt, in attendance, which was fortuitous for us. She had some work to do as I had sore spots on my butt, glutes and back.
We had 90 minutes until the final so there was plenty of time to work on the problem areas. I was constantly up and down from the treatment table. I’d do one run through and then come back for more work as we tried to loosen up my back. It wasn’t the ideal preparation for a key race, but physically I had the all clear to go – although, mentally, I was struggling. I just wanted this day to end. The quicker I got out of Crystal Palace the better.
Apart from the tightness in my back I wasn’t sensing any mental demons from the earlier fall at the start and I got away with my customary speed over the first hurdle in the final. At halfway I was in front and seemed to be holding it together, but then I sensed something was off. It felt like I was running with flat feet. I sensed Wells come at me over the last two hurdles, but there was nothing there. As we crossed the line I knew I’d stuffed it up. The American had won in 12.57, just .02 of a second ahead of me.
My mood darkened even further as I watched Wells’s reaction to the victory. She’d broken out into some sort of dance routine and was hamming it up to the crowd.
I was in no mood for talking and stormed through the mixed zone without comment.
‘What the hell was that?’ were my first words to Sharon as my emotions started to boil over. While I was disappointed to have lost my final race in the lead-up to the Games, what was pissing me off more was how technically poor I’d been. I had no explanation for it. My back was a little stiff, but I wasn’t using that as an excuse.
What scared me was the Olympic Games were only three weeks away, and if I served that up again I could kiss any chance of a medal goodbye, let alone one with gold on it.
‘Let’s just put it down to a bad day,’ Sharon said.
Eventually when the anger subsided and the tears went away, I agreed with my coach. There was no use stewing on it, and the next day we found the perfect distraction.
Kieran and I had been based at my aunt’s house in Kent, just 25 minutes away from Tonbridge, which was where the Australian team was going to be based in the lead-up to the Games. We’d been travelling there each day for training, as the facilities at the prestigious Tonbridge School were first-class.
They’d been so welcoming and had gone out of their way to help us, even marking special lines for my hurdles on the high jump runway because we wanted to train with the crosswind at my back.
This was all part of Sharon’s master plan to break the world record. We’d visited Tonbridge 12 months earlier to have a look around and my coach had investigated the wind. The locals told her that it was consistently strong coming down through the valley and seemed to always blow across the track.
That’s why we trained along the high jump area and not the normal track – because Sharon wanted me to get my legs used to turning over super fast. The wind pushing me along made sure that happened, and with each training session I’d become more and more comfortable. Her theory was that if you trained your mind and body to move at extreme speed, then when it happened in an Olympic final you’d be able to remain in control.
Being around my family and in an English-speaking country with familiar food and television was a welcome change, and we loved it.
For a distraction we made a visit to Thorpe Park, a theme park in nearby Surrey. There was a big group of us – my aunt, her four children, two of my cousins and their friends – and it was so much fun. The rides and games certainly helped take my mind off hurdles and dancing Americans for a few hours.
As a precaution we took it easy with training over the next few days, as our greatest fear was my back flaring again. I was still struggling to get my head around the Crystal Palace debacle, but that all changed when I saw the results of Wells’s next race. She’d competed in Lucerne, Switzerland, three days later and had finished third in 12.79.
Suddenly, it all made sense: Wells had been at her absolutely best in London while I’d had a bad day.
‘If they can only just beat me by two hundredths of a second on a bad day, they haven’t got a chance at the Olympics,’ I told Sharon.
What had been forgotten in the fall-out from my last race was that a week earlier I’d run 12.40 in Paris. That was a clearer indication of where I was at and, more importantly, I knew the others weren’t near it.
* * *
‘I’m the hunted.’
I was sitting on a stool in front of the world’s media at the Adidas Centre for my final press conference. The track and field program at the Games started the following day, and everyone wanted to know how the gold medal favourite was handling the pressure.
‘Everyone is chasing me,’ I said. ‘But at the same time it keeps me on my toes and I love to go out and race. I love competition; that’s what I thrive on. If it all goes to plan I should be winning, especially with my personal best as it’s much faster than everyone else in the race so they have a lot of catching up to do if they are running at their best.
‘I have been competing for Australia since I was 16 years old. I’ve been to an Olympics; I’ve been to four world championships now and two Commonwealth Games. I think I know how to keep myself grounded. I know how to stay focused and I know how to stay hungry.’
A question I got asked all the time was: How do you control your nerves? People understandably saw competing at an Olympic Games as a scary experience because of the pressure and expectation you had to deal with. I tried to spin it around to a positive. The key thing for me was I’d raced over the hurdles a million times before and, while it’s obviously different because it’s an Olympic Games final, that’s just a title. It’s still a 100m hurdles race against girls who I’d run against every single time in Europe over the previous couple of months.
I’m lucky in a sense because I have so much fun out there on the track that I haven’t had to work on that side of my mentality. Running the actual race is really exciting for me. The tough time is getting ready for the race, when that nervous energy hits and you’re feeling sick in the stomach. That’s when I ask myself: ‘Why the hell do I do this? Why do I enjoy this?’ But then, the moment I cross the line, I’m always like: ‘Wow, how much fun was that?’
My final training session was after the press conference, because the first round of the 100m hurdles was four days away.
I had some new Olympic shoes to try out and they looked amazing, with a faint Australian flag on them. My nickname was now on the inside and I chuckled when on closer inspection I realised there was a spelling mistake – it read ‘KWICKCHICK’ rather than ‘KWIKCHIK’.
I was already battling my superstitions about the shoes anyway. Adidas, who’d stuck by me since 2005, wanted me to wear my normal shoes in the heats and then the special Olympic ones in the semifinal and final. Given how much they’d done for me over the journey, I didn’t want to let them down, but as a rule I preferred to wear the same shoes for the whole competition.
I could sense the anxiety building over the situation but I was proud of myself for not letting it take over.
‘Sally, you’re not going to get a silver medal because you’re wearing different shoes,’ I kept telling myself. ‘It’s okay; it’s not going to make any difference.’
This fight in my head was over fairly quick and I didn’t give it another thought after that.
Sharon liked to do a ten-day taper, which involved doing absolutely nothing for the final three days. That drove me insane because I felt like I hadn’t done enough and should be out there doing something. The idea was that on race day I’d be so excited and have all this energy to burn because I hadn’t trained for three days. It was like I’d been caged up and then finally let loose.
That year, I’d finally gotten to experience an Olympic Games Opening Ceremony. We’d been brought in by bus from Tonbridge for the night, which turned out to be as good as I’d imagined. It started off a bit weird, though, because when we walked into the stadium it was in darkness and the only lights were the small ones they had on the seats. From the track you couldn’t see behind them to make out if there were people there, and initially I thought the place was virtually empty. I could make out a few figures in the stands but I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is really embarrassing for the organisers.’
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
When the lights went on I realised the place was packed, and it looked incredible. There was a lot of noise and it was a goosebumps moment. I was loving every second of it until about halfway through, when I realised I was busting to go to the toilet. It got to the point where I couldn’t even take in the lighting of the Olympic flame because I was sitting down, crunched over and praying that there was a toilet nearby. I was seriously in pain. When the ceremony finally finished, I couldn’t even run to the toilet; instead it was a slow walk outside the stadium before we found any type of toilet.
We’d eventually made it into the athletes’ village a couple of days before the start of the athletics program because there was a shortage of space, so we had to wait until some of the competitors – mostly the swimmers – who were on early in the Games had finished and could be moved out. But village life was again great and it was almost like I got into this Olympic daze where I just went with the flow and, before I realised it, it was race day.
I was rooming with Alana Boyd, and we had the normal crew in our apartment area, with Dani Samuels and javelin thrower Kim Mickle in the room next to us. Pole vaulter Liz Parnov and the other javelin thrower, Kathryn Mitchell, shared a room, while 400m hurdler Lauren Boden and Melissa Breen were across the hall. They were all pretty easy girls to get along with, but we hardly saw each other because everyone had different training times and we also respected each other’s space.
The bonus was we had live streaming of events on the TV in our rooms, so I got to watch a lot of other sports, in particular gymnastics.
I like to go to the stadium once before I compete, so I went out for the first night of the athletics with Kim Mickle, as Melissa was running in the heats of the 100m, and Dani was also in the discus qualifying.
There had already been a lot of talk about the track, which had been dubbed the ‘Magic Carpet’. This came about after hometown hero Jessica Ennis had produced an incredible time in the 100m hurdles, which had been the first event of the heptathlon on the opening morning. She’d run 12.54, which was a world record for the event in the heptathlon and was the same time Dawn Harper had run to win gold in the Beijing Olympics.
Sharon was particularly pleased as she backed my technique to handle a super fast pace compared with my rivals. Hurdlers can get in trouble if the track is faster than normal and the speed is at a level they aren’t accustomed to, which generally leads to mistakes. What it told me was that I had to get my arse into gear.
I was a really bad watcher. I hated how you weren’t in control of anything when you were seated in the stands. Dani was really nervous because she’d been struggling, and we were all praying that she found one big throw to get her into the final. Thankfully she did, and we were screaming and carrying on, which got a thumbs up from her.
The noise in the stadium, particularly when Ennis did something, was what stuck in my mind from my reconnaissance mission. Unfortunately, I wasn’t thinking about the noise – I wish I had been – when I entered the stadium three days later for the heats of the 100m hurdles.
Without any warning, my back had gone again. I had no idea where it had come from, but I was in pain as I tried to do some run-throughs at the warm-up track. After every rep I’d have to go back to the physio for a quick manipulation of the spine, wait 20 seconds, and then go out and do another rep.
In the call room I normally liked to move around a bit just to keep the legs warm. Everyone else was doing it and I tried to go for a 5-metre skip but couldn’t do it. I just had to sit there, as there was nothing I could do about it. While I was in pain, it wasn’t going to stop me, and I knew I was in good shape, so it was just a matter of getting across the finish line.
My warm-up in the stadium was one run-through over the hurdles and that was it, because the back was hurting too much. I figured that once I got down in the blocks adrenalin would take over.
Despite the discomfort, I still had in my mind that I wanted to mimic what had happened at the world championships the previous year. That meant I wanted to run the fastest heat of the morning. I’d noticed Kellie Wells had won an earlier heat in 12.69 and I knew I’d run 12.53 in Daegu, so there were some figures in my head.
Thankfully I’d been right about the adrenalin, because once the gun sounded my mind was clear. While I didn’t hurdle great, I cruised home in 12.57 without trouble, which at least brought a smile to my face.
Lolo Jones won the final heat in 12.68, but she wasn’t who I was worried about. Jamaica’s Brigitte Foster-Hylton, who’d had the second fastest time for the year coming into the Games, had stumbled midway through the race and was out of the Games.
I was in the middle of a TV interview when I saw her rush past me in tears. I broke away from the interview mid-sentence and went over to comfort her, because it was heartbreaking to see that happen to anyone.
Getting through the mixed zone was the next task, with everyone keen for a quick word. What I found out during my way through was that my time had been the quickest heat run in Olympic history.
Back at the warm-up track I jumped straight into an ice bath, and despite the back problem, I was quite calm. I was determined not to stress out about it. I’d learnt my lesson from 2009, when I’d got that worked up before the race because of my injury that I’d wasted all my energy.
There was a composed feel about the rest of the day. I went back to the village, had some lunch and more physio work before just chilling out and watching some other sports on the TV. Sleep came easily, and after eight hours I woke with a smile because the date I’d had burned into my head for a couple of years – Tuesday 7 August 2012 – had finally arrived.