‘Can you please let me win?’
I looked over at the girl who was politely asking the question. We were about to race each other in the school sports at my latest primary school in Sydney. I was the new kid on the block and I’d been told she was the best runner in Year 3 at La Perouse Public School.
‘Oh yeah, sure,’ I said with a smile.
And I was genuine … until the gun went off. Then I became a different person.
There was no way in the world I was going to let her win the race. Something had kicked in and I ran as fast as I could to the finish line. I won the race and received a very confused look from my rival. Already my hatred of losing was inbuilt.
It got me some new friends, though, as everyone kept coming up to me, saying, ‘You can run pretty fast, can’t you?’
‘Yeah,’ would be my embarrassed reply.
My PE teacher apparently saw it too because he wrote in my report card: ‘Sally has the ability to become an elite athlete one day.’
I was pretty excited to read that, as that was a goal of mine, but it wasn’t going to be as a runner; I was going to be a gymnast. It had been my one passion from very early in life.
My mother, Anne, loves telling the story about how at the age of one – I was walking by eight and a half months – she took me down to the park with some neighbouring children.
They were older than me and were playing on the monkey bars. She says I somehow managed to pull myself up onto the bars and immediately hung upside down.
‘Well, you’re going into gymnastics, then,’ was her immediate thought.
Proudly showing off my monkey bar skills at the age of one. Mum says this was the moment she decided I was going to be a gymnast.
I started when I was four years old. I would do a gymnastics class and then walk across the park and do swimming lessons. That lasted for about a year before the timetables were changed and I was forced to pick one over the other. I went with gymnastics and was quickly put into the elite squad.
My fourth birthday party with friends from left to right: Samantha Judson, me, Amanda Judson and Scott Hulbert.
Bouncing and jumping all over the place suited my personality because, as my mother kept telling me, I was crazy. I would often stand at the top of the stairs in our home and, as soon as Mum walked past, I’d leap out at her and expect her to catch me. I had so much energy, and I think that’s a big reason why she steered me towards sport.
Gymnastics quickly became serious, and by the age of seven I was training up to 30 hours a week. Twice a week I would train at 6 am and Mum would drop me off, as it was on her bus route into the city, where she worked.
The gymnastics coach would then take me to school, which at that stage was Coogee Public School, but we’d usually be around 15–20 minutes late. I would have to go to the office and get a late slip to take to the teachers to explain why I was late. I just wrote, ‘At gymnastics.’ This worked for a couple of days before the questions started.
‘Is this going to be happening all the time?’
‘I only do it twice a week in the mornings,’ I responded.
‘Okay, then,’ was the teacher’s response.
A couple of weeks later a letter was sent home from the principal, saying I had to choose between gymnastics and school because they weren’t going to allow me to be late anymore.
My first day at Coogee Public School with Samantha Judson.
It was a no-brainer, and Mum agreed. I changed schools.
Gymnastics was pretty full on, as the trainers pushed us hard at that young age because we weren’t scared of anything. The theory was that the older we got, the greater the chance that the fear factor, with regards to the height of the bars and beam, would set in.
My best apparatus was the vault, because of my speed, and I was quite good at doing the giant rings on the bars. The beam was by far my worst; I was hopeless and couldn’t stand it because I didn’t have the patience for it. The floor routine was always interesting, because I could never remember the whole routine and was constantly getting into trouble for forgetting what to do next.
I competed at the NSW state championships, but most of the time we would take part in team events representing our club, Bunnerong. There had been a group of us who’d started together and gone through the ranks in the elite squad. We were a competitive bunch, and even at the age of ten I hated to lose.
At one particular competition I remember, Bunnerong had three teams of three athletes each. I was so annoyed with the team I was in, because I thought they weren’t good enough. One of the girls hurt her ankle three days before the competition, which added to my frustration, considering I didn’t really think the other girl was strong enough.
I may have been a little bit off the mark with that one. Her name was Hayley Tyrell, and she actually ended up being one of the best gymnasts in Australia. But she was clearly a late developer, because it wasn’t really happening for us at this competition!
At the end of it we all had to sit down on the floor for the presentation. I had my fingers crossed that we’d won a medal, and when they announced that third place was going to Bunnerong, I got up and was so excited.
It was the wrong team.
I sulked for the rest of the night and, to make matters worse, my lift home was with the girls who’d come third. The whole trip they just sat there beaming, playing with their medals. I was the biggest sore loser.
I loved gymnastics, but a change of scenery was to alter the course of my life forever.
* * *
My mum was born in England, one of five girls, and came to Australia on a holiday with her cousin in 1981. She ended up staying.
On 19 September 1986 I came into the world, and it’s just been us ever since, given my father has never been on the scene.
From when I was five months old, Mum used to work long hours – and sometimes even two jobs – to make ends meet. In 1995 we moved from Sydney to the Gold Coast in search of a better life.
One of our first tasks was to find a gymnastics club. We joined the Southport Gymnastics Club and I immediately didn’t like it. It was a very cliquey environment, and I felt like an outcast and wasn’t really made welcome. I was also a very shy and sensitive kid who hated feeling like people were making fun of me.
‘I don’t want to do this anymore,’ I told Mum after just my third training session. She tried to change my mind, given she knew how much I loved the sport, but I hated the way I’d been treated.
By chance, a new Little Athletics club was just opening up at Helensvale around the same time, and Mum had me there on day one. I’d always enjoyed running at school, so she suggested we give it a go. It would prove to be an inspired decision. I quickly identified my four favourite events: the 100m, 200m, high jump and long jump.
The problem was, there weren’t many girls at my club, so it wasn’t long before I was competing against the boys. Given how shy I was, I didn’t want to be around the boys or have to talk to them all the time. In the end, that was the reason I moved to Ashmore Little Athletics, where there was a big group of girls and I instantly felt a lot more comfortable.
I had started to win my fair share of medals and, by 1999, when I was in my last year of primary school, I was taking part in state and national championships.
After competing in the Queensland Schools Athletics State Championships in 1999. We won the 4x100m relay representing the South Coast region and I’m in the blue singlet at the bottom next to Dana Feltcher.
It was at the Little Athletics state championships in March of that year in Townsville that I met the woman who would change my life. Her name was Sharon Hannan.
Unbeknown to me, my mother had been introduced to Sharon, who coached a squad on the Gold Coast close to where we lived, just before I raced in the final of the 200m hurdles. They watched me win the race, and Sharon turned to Mum and said, ‘She’s fast.’
Mum asked if she would coach me, but Sharon pointed out that with the national championships just three weeks away there was no point starting then. She told her to send me down in May, after the season break. Normally Sharon didn’t coach primary school kids, but because I was almost 13 – a year older than most in Grade 7 – she was prepared to bend the rules.
I was so nervous going down to the track for my first session with her.
‘Wow, you’ve grown, haven’t you?’ Sharon said.
‘I don’t know, have I?’ I thought, ‘Who’s this strange lady?’ I didn’t even know her and she was saying I’d grown.
It felt like the first day at a new school. I didn’t know anyone in the training group, and for the first few weeks it was tough, but I was very good at doing what I was told. I just went with the flow. I didn’t question Mum about why I needed a coach; I just did what she wanted. And whatever Sharon told me to do, I did without question.
The reason I was getting serious about running wasn’t because I wanted to do it. It was more because everyone else was doing it, and I just wanted to be with the in crowd.
It’s funny when I hear other people’s stories about how they knew from day one that they wanted to be an Olympic champion. I never thought like that when I was young. I knew I was competitive when I was in a race, but outside of that I was just along for the ride.
Then along came the Sydney Olympics.