3

‘You won’t be able to do the 200m or the 200m hurdles because you can’t run around a bend.’

My heart sank as I listened to the Athletics Australia team doctor, Tim Barbour, explain that my sore foot was actually fractured. It had gone from a hot spot to a stress fracture and was now fully fractured.

We were in Melbourne for the Australian All Schools Championships and I couldn’t believe I wasn’t going to be doing all my events. As soon as we left the doctor’s office, I burst into tears. I think it was a build-up of anger from a tough few months, and it just all overflowed.

Six months earlier we’d had X-rays on the foot that had shown nothing, but I wasn’t convinced because it continued to ache. I’d gone to a podiatrist, who showed me how to strap the foot, and he also put some padding in my shoes to try to ease the pain. I ended up having the worst-looking feet, because every time the strapping came off, skin would just peel off with it. Instead of working on the track, Sharon had me exercising in the pool for three months to maintain my fitness base.

I’d managed to compete at the Queensland All Schools and smashed the Australian record in the 200m hurdles, which was why I was so devastated about not being allowed to run it in the nationals. We’d come down to Melbourne a couple of weeks earlier to train with legendary hurdles coach Roy Boyd. Sharon was in awe of his knowledge and wanted him to have a look at our training group to get some advice on technique.

I didn’t even get through the first session with Roy because of the foot, and the next day I wasn’t even able to break into a jog. Walking seemed to be okay, but as soon as I started to run, it really hurt. That was when we decided I should see the team doctor.

I blamed Sharon for what had happened. Maybe it was just me being an unreasonable teenager, but I didn’t want to be around her. I didn’t even want to talk to her.

My mood worsened when I was defeated by 1/100th of a second in the 100m by a girl I’d easily defeated at the Queensland state titles. With my anger boiling, I took it out on the field in the 90m hurdles final and smashed the Australian record, running 12.51.

Sitting in the grandstand watching the 200m hurdles was the hardest thing I’d experienced in my short career. It was painful to watch a girl from Tasmania claim the national title in a time that was more than two seconds outside my record.

As soon as I got back to the Gold Coast, they put my foot in a plaster cast. I needed crutches to get around, and for eight weeks that was my life. To make matters worse, it just happened to be one of the hottest summers in recent times in Queensland. I was stuck at home every day and began to question what I was doing. I’d had a horrible year and was constantly asking myself: ‘Why am I doing this sport?’ To make matters worse, I started to put on weight because I wasn’t doing any exercise.

When they eventually let me back into training, there was one major problem: I still couldn’t run. In fact, I couldn’t even jog because the foot was too sore. And my leg had wasted away to nothing and was as skinny as my forearm.

The option that Sharon came up with was race walking, so while everyone else was zipping around at training, I was waddling along in the outside lane.

It was embarrassing, and the whole period was tough. I felt confused, I felt like I had no friends, and I hated everyone.

The carrot to lure me out of the funk was the world junior championships, which were in Kingston, Jamaica, in 2002.

I was determined to make that team. The problem I had was that the nationals were in April, so were a couple of months’ training going to be enough?

They weren’t, and I knew that even before I stepped out for the opening round of the Under 20 100m. Twelve months earlier I’d easily beaten the field in my career breakthrough performance. That felt like a lifetime ago.

I finished third in my heat, clocking 12.20 to get through to the final. Apart from my own sorry plight, what was also annoying me was that the girl who was going to win, fellow Queenslander Michelle Cutmore, wasn’t going to go to the world juniors. Her coach didn’t want her to go, and I was furious that she was even competing if that was the case. It was a big tease. She ended up winning impressively in 11.83 seconds, which further infuriated me when I came sixth.

I didn’t make the team.

* * *

High school was an interesting time. I certainly wasn’t part of the ‘popular’ group, except when it came to athletics day.

‘You’re the runner girl, aren’t you?’ was the usual question from my fellow Helensvale State High School students.

‘My name is Sally, by the way,’ was my stock-standard response.

The first few years at high school had been a lot of fun; I had a great circle of friends. But I sensed we started to drift apart the older we became. While I still loved being around them, we were moving in different directions. I was right into athletics and they were off doing other things in their lives. Unfortunately, I started to feel like I couldn’t connect with them like I had before. It made me feel lonely, because I wasn’t able to talk to them about my running, as they wouldn’t understand.

One person at school who I was able to confide in was my PE teacher, Brett Green. He was a big supporter, which helped, given I was always missing heaps of classes because of track commitments. Mr Green had been one of the coaches at my original Little Athletics club, and had told Mum early on that I was ‘one of the most balanced athletes’ he’d seen. He was always encouraging me to stick with my running.

The problem was that for most of the year just gone, I’d been questioning why I had. Eventually, the wheel slowly started to turn towards the end of 2002. The All Schools nationals were in Tasmania in December, and I managed to get into the final of the 100m. I still wasn’t allowed to run bends, which meant the 200m hurdles and the 200m were again off the agenda.

I had no idea how I was going to go, and it was a competitive field led by Michelle Cutmore, the girl who’d won the Under 20 title earlier in the year, and another fast Queenslander, Jacinta Boyd.

For the first time in what seemed like forever, I felt fast throughout the race and managed to claim the win in 11.99 seconds. I was so excited about the time because it was the first time I’d broken 12 seconds for more than a year.

My fitness was clearly improving and my confidence returned instantly. I could feel my love of the sport being rekindled.

The runner girl was back.

* * *

‘I just feel like screaming.’

This time I was saying it to Sharon with delight, which was a nice change from the events of the previous couple of years.

We were celebrating my victory in the Under 20 100m at the 2003 national championships in Brisbane. While the win was good, the time was what had me dancing around the warm-up track. I’d just run the fastest time of my career, 11.76, to claim revenge on New Zealand’s April Brough.

A day earlier she’d pipped me in the final of the 200m, which, naturally, I didn’t take very well. I didn’t like a stranger coming into my backyard and beating me, so I was more pumped than usual for the 100m. This time I put a space on her – she ran second in 12.02 seconds – and it turned out my winning time would’ve got me third place in the open national final.

The victory booked me a spot on my first Australian team for the World Youth Championships, which were being held in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada, in July. I was so excited about representing my country, but little did I know then that there were going to be even bigger fish to fry soon.

The week after the nationals, there was a meeting at Runaway Bay on the Gold Coast. Everyone wanted to run there because it was a fast new track and the wind was always perfect. Given my recent performance, Sharon was sure I’d get a run in the 100m A-race.

She was fuming when we arrived to find I was in the B-race against hurdlers Jana Pittman and Fiona Cullen. I took my anger out on the track and ran 11.57 seconds. It was unbelievable. In the space of seven days I’d slashed .34 of a second off my personal best. In other words, I’d improved by more than 3 metres!

Despite the obvious excitement, there was still steam coming out of my ears as I watched the A-race, which was won by Mindy Slomka in 11.62.

A week later I’d just gotten home after having spent the afternoon playing soccer when the telephone rang. It was Keith Connor.

‘Congratulations, you’ve been selected for the world championships in the 4x100m relay,’ he said.

I thought he was talking about the World Youth Championships, because I hadn’t officially heard anything about them.

‘Okay, thank you.’

And that was the end of the conversation.

I hung up the phone and then thought about the conversation I’d just had with the Australian head coach.

He’d said 4x100m relay at the world championships. The word ‘youth’ hadn’t been mentioned.

Oh my God!

I picked up the phone and rang my coach.

‘Sharon, I just got picked for the world championships in the relay,’ I screamed down the line.

My coach seemed calmer than I’d expected. ‘We already knew, but we weren’t allowed to tell you,’ she said.

Mum was the next phone call, and she had also been tipped off. Given I was just 16, Connor had wanted to get clearance from her and Sharon about sending me to Paris for the world titles.

‘Hang on a minute,’ she said when she picked up. I could hear her getting out of her seat and then, in a very loud voice so the rest of her office could hear, she said, ‘So, you’ve been picked for the world championships in the 4x100m relay.’

I was so excited, but there was some drama in the organising. Athletics Australia wanted me to go straight from the World Youth Championships in Canada, which were on 9–13 July, to Europe for a training camp. I would stay there until the Paris world championships started on 23 August.

But Sharon stood her ground. ‘She has to come back; she has to keep training and I have to keep coaching her.’

The travelling didn’t bother me, as I’d been doing it all my life. When I was three months old, Mum had me on a plane over to England to show off her new baby to the family. I’d also been to Disneyland three times before I was ten because Mum worked for Air Canada, which meant she got really cheap flights. We would often go to England via the US to visit a friend she had in Chicago. Then the stop-off on the way home would either be Disneyland or Hawaii.

Part of being an only child with a single mum was that I learnt from an early age how to look after myself, to be independent and confident in myself. Mum was always telling me, ‘You can do anything you want in life.’

With my mother, Anne, when I was just a few weeks old.

She was my greatest motivator, and I knew how proud it made her to see me in my first Australian team jacket. I’d instantly fallen in love with it the moment I put it on at our pre-departure camp. Cameras went into overdrive as we were all so excited to have our Aussie gear on.

I’d decided to do the 200m and 100m hurdles at the World Youths because Sharon and I both agreed it was the best fit on a very tight schedule. It was made tighter by the fact that I also had to do a medley relay, in which four athletes ran different distances of 100m, 200m, 300m and 400m.

What had concerned both of us in the lead-up wasn’t so much the hectic schedule, but something that had reared its ugly head during the Australian domestic series.

As part of the ‘Talent on Tour’ program run by Athletics Australia, a number of elite juniors had been invited to compete at the Grand Prix meet in Canberra. It was a big deal because we were given the same VIP treatment as the star athletes. I went with another Queensland girl, Jackie Davies, and we were picked up at the airport by AA and driven to our fancy hotel, where we stayed the night before the meet. It was my first real insight into the life of a professional athlete, and I liked it – a lot.

Everything had gone smoothly until we were on the blocks for the start of the 100m. This was my first crack at the big time, so I was very toey, and even more so after Jackie broke. Suddenly all I could think about was false-starting. I kept telling myself to stop thinking about it, but as we got into position again, I was scared.

‘On your marks, set …’

I was gone. I couldn’t stop myself and left the blocks before the gun.

Given I was the second person to break, that meant I was disqualified. The tears started. I couldn’t believe that I’d broken in my first race on the professional domestic circuit.

When I got home, Sharon was waiting with a plan. From that point on, if any member of the squad broke in training, their session was over and they were kicked off the track. She also suggested I speak to a sports psychologist, because every time she’d previously watched Jackie Davies, she’d false-started, and Sharon didn’t want me to become like that.

The psychologist was really helpful after I explained how in Canberra I just kept saying: ‘Don’t false-start. Don’t false-start. Don’t false-start.’

She told me to turn it into a positive, and we came up with some starting cues that I had to use when I was on the blocks. Instead of the negative slant, I was to now go the other way and say: ‘Fast start. Strong start.’

This exercise showed how invaluable it was to have good people around me. Sharon had identified a problem and sought a way to fix it. Having that support base as a young athlete was crucial. So many careers are wasted by not having the right support during those formative years.

The psychologist’s advice seemed to work at training, and Sharon’s parting words before I left for Canada spelled out loud and clear her thoughts on the matter: ‘If you false-start at the World Youths, you’re not coming back to this squad.’