‘I’m too tired.’ I couldn’t believe those were the first words that came out of my mouth after winning my first gold medal for Australia. My teammate Joel Milburn had run down and thrown me an Australian flag because I’d just won the 100m hurdles at the World Youth Championships.
When I won the 100m hurdles at the IAAF World Youth Championships on 12 July 2003 in Sherbrooke, Canada. It was a thrilling moment to be winning my first gold medal in a world event. (Photo by Michael Steele/Getty Images)
‘It’s a warm-up lap for the 200,’ he insisted.
I smiled, grabbed the flag and did the victory lap. I had the final of the 200m in 30 minutes’ time, which was why I didn’t think I should be doing any celebrating.
The championships had been madness.
My program had me running seven races in three days, which included three rounds of the hurdles, three rounds of the 200m, and the medley relay.
In the lead-up to the hurdles final, I’d run the 200m semifinal and then the relay heat, where we’d been disqualified because Jackie Davies was in the wrong spot at the changeover.
By the time I got out to the start of the hurdles I was stuffed. I literally sat on the lane box and thought, ‘How the hell am I going to run this?’
I actually felt like I was going to pass out for a second. Thankfully, I managed to pull it all together to take the win in 13.42 from Jamaica’s Latoya Greaves.
Competing in the 100m hurdles heats during the IAAF World Youth Championships on 11 July 2003 in Sherbrooke, Canada. I was 16 years old and it was my first international event. (Photo by Michael Steele/Getty Images)
My head was still spinning by the time I got into the call room for the 200m final. I finished fifth in the race, but I didn’t really care.
The best part about it all was that Mum had been there to see me win my first gold medal. Her friend in Chicago, Laurie, had surprised her by paying for the airline ticket over to Canada.
Hearing the national anthem and watching the flag being raised was better than I could have imagined, and I actually couldn’t stop laughing the whole way through it.
We had six weeks back at home before I headed off to Paris to make my senior team debut. This suddenly meant it was becoming real. I’d always thought I hadn’t done anything until I made a senior team.
Mum had instilled in me from an early age not to be cocky or arrogant.
‘You’ve got to stay humble,’ she told me over and over again. I think it was the British way: remain conservative and very polite.
So every time someone would come up to me after a race and say how fantastic it was, I’d always thank them but play it down. I knew I was a good runner but I didn’t really count any of it as exceptional until I was going to be a senior athlete.
In my opinion, that’s where a lot of kids get messed up – because when they get to their teenage years, they think they rule the world and everything is going to be handed to them on a silver platter. I felt I’d been forced to work pretty hard to get to that point, but the reality was I hadn’t achieved anything.
Paris was going to change all of that. But there was one minor issue that I had to deal with: getting in the team. I didn’t want to go all that way and not even run. Being the reserve and sitting in the stands was not what I was planning, although we suspected that was what relay coach Cliff Mallett had in mind. Sharon had smelled a rat very early on, as Cliff coached three of the girls in the squad.
Making the 16-year-old the token reserve and getting his own girls in the team was what Sharon thought was the plan.
Ultimately, the result of a run-off – which we’d campaigned for – would decide the line-up. Before I left we put in several weeks of hard training, and Sharon got me to do a time trial against some of my male training partners to get an idea of where I was at.
I was nervous about it, but the result was a pleasant surprise: 11.76. We’d found out the other relay girls, who were already over in Europe at a training camp, had also done a time trial but it had been significantly slower. That certainly gave me a spring in my step when I got on the plane.
There were only three of us flying over together – me, team manager Di Barnes and media manager Katie Hodge – as the rest of the team was already in Europe. We were actually the first ones into the athletes’ village – which was in a university compound – and there was nothing really happening there. There wasn’t even internet for Katie to do any work, so Di decided to give us a job. We were to travel around Paris and time how long it took from the village to all of the major attractions in what many people call the most beautiful city in the world.
It was a tough gig but someone had to do it, so for the next couple of days Katie and I learnt the ins and outs of the rail system and I quickly fell in love with Paris.
Then all the athletes started to arrive, and I was like a kid in a candy store.
‘Oh my God, there’s Jana Pittman,’ I’d blurt out. ‘And there’s Tamsyn.’
I had to contain my excitement because, first of all, I had to take care of some important business. Once everyone had settled in, the run-off for the final two spots in the relay team was arranged.
Lauren Hewitt and Sharon Cripps were already in, as they’d qualified for individual events at the championships, so the trial involved myself, Amy Harris, Melanie Kleeberg and Mindy Slomka.
Mallett coached both Kleeberg, who had an injured foot and shouldn’t have been over there, and Harris, who was probably the best 60m sprinter I’d seen. Slomka had arrived out of shape, so I liked my chances against her.
I knew I had to smash them so it left Mallett with no wriggle room.
The trial went exactly as expected. Harris flew the start, I quickly took care of the other two, and then with 10 metres to go I caught Harris and comfortably beat them all.
My first visit to the track was on the second day of competition. I went with Mindy, as none of the other relay girls wanted to come out. It was a poor decision by them, because we got to see the most controversial moment of the championships.
It was during the quarterfinals of the men’s 100m, and American Jon Drummond protested against being ruled as having false-started by lying on the track and refusing to move. He was adamant he hadn’t broken, and for almost half an hour he lay on the track with his hands behind his head, ignoring irate officials.
The crowd were going nuts, first at Drummond, but then, after watching the replay on the big screen, they turned on the officials, as it looked like he hadn’t moved at all on the blocks.
I was loving every second of the drama, although it didn’t help my teammate Patrick Johnson, who finished last in the race when they eventually restarted it once American team officials had finally convinced Drummond to vacate.
A couple of days later, I was back at the Stade de France. Cripps had made it through the first round of the 200m, but suffered a slight injury and wanted to withdraw from the second round to save herself for the relay. To do that, she needed to go out to the stadium and get permission to compete in the relay. No-one else wanted to go with her, so I was more than happy to get another taste of the electric atmosphere.
This time we had to go underneath the stadium, which meant that after Sharon had got her forms sorted, we got the chance to sneak up through the opening where the athletes walked out onto the track. When I looked up and saw the crowd, I was blown away. There were more than 70,000 people in the stands. It was a goosebumps moment.
Right there and then I made the decision. This was what I wanted to do. This was now my life. I wanted to be at these competitions, in these stadiums, performing in front of all these people.
The heats of the relay were on the Friday, and the night before we all gathered in the basement of our dormitory to watch Jana in the 400m hurdles final. If we needed any more encouragement about what we had to do, Jana certainly provided it when she stormed home over the final 50 metres to win the gold medal. We all went nuts and started jumping around.
I was rooming with Amy, and it was no surprise that we struggled to get any sleep. We were both so nervous that we actually felt sick, as we’d never been to an international meet before, so didn’t really know what to expect.
It had been decided that I would run the important final leg mainly because I hadn’t been in many relays and they didn’t really trust a 16-year-old taking care of a couple of baton changes.
Remarkably, I was calmer the closer the race got. Those nerves from the night before had gone, and when I got out on the track for the warm-up, I took in the crowd, which was doing a massive Mexican wave.
As it went past the top of the straight where the anchorleg runners were mingling, it hit me. I wasn’t in the crowd doing the wave like I normally would be; I was actually part of the show. Then from somewhere in the crowd I heard my name.
‘Hi, Sal.’
I turned around and saw a familiar face. It was Matt Favier, who worked at the Queensland Academy of Sport.
‘Hey, what are you doing here?’ Just seeing someone I knew instantly made me more comfortable and relaxed about the biggest race of my life – which was just about to start.
Being so far away it was hard to tell how we were travelling, although the first change between Amy and Sharon didn’t quite seem right and we looked to be behind a few teams.
I was getting the baton off Lauren. The last thing I wanted to do was cause us to be disqualified, but I hadn’t heard her yell ‘hand’, which was the signal to put my arm back to receive the baton.
As I was nearly out of the changeover box – the 20-metre area in which the exchange must happen – I threw my hand back without her call.
It was perfect timing, because almost immediately the baton was there and I was off.
Something strange happened next. I wasn’t making up ground. I wasn’t catching the girls in front of me.
This isn’t right. Why can’t I catch these people?
In the end I didn’t lose ground, but I was pissed off when I crossed the line in last position. The sloppy first change had cost us and we’d never recovered.
Later, Mum told me how she watched it on TV back home on the Gold Coast, and Jane Flemming, who was commentating, had been impressed with my reaction after the race.
‘It’s good that she looks really disappointed,’ Flemming had said. ‘It means she really wanted to win, really wanted to do better.’
I didn’t care that I was 16 and was running against some of the fastest women on the planet; I hated losing.
That was the end of my championships – or so I thought. The next morning all of the 4x100m relay girls were called to a meeting with team management. It turned out Jana had pulled out of the 4x400m relay after her victory in the 400m hurdles, and Tamsyn Lewis was also out because of a torn muscle in her butt. They wanted to know if any of us would put our hands up to run. I quickly looked at the floor, because there was no way I was putting mine up.
Then Jana’s coach, Phil King, stood up.
‘If this was the American team and they were asked this question, every single one of their girls would put their hand up to have another shot on that stage,’ King said. ‘You should all be very disappointed in yourselves.’
He was making me feel so bad that I felt I had to put my hand up because clearly no-one else was going to.
Straightaway Keith Connor said, ‘Don’t you dare tell Sharon that you’re going to be running the 4x4.’
I didn’t understand what he was talking about, but that was mainly because I’d been gripped with fear. I made it out of the room without bursting into tears, but I could feel them building and when I got back to my room I lost it.
‘I can’t believe I’m doing this,’ I said as I sobbed. The whole thing was overwhelming. I was 16, at the senior world championships, and now I was supposed to do a 4x400m relay when I’d never run a 400m race in my life.
Lauren came in to check on me because she knew I was upset, which helped calm me down.
The next morning Keith wanted to have breakfast with me because I think he’d heard I was upset. He didn’t really help matters when he pointed out the girls I would be racing against in the 4x400m relay.
‘Jesus Christ,’ I said. ‘They look so big and fast.’
He could tell I was intimidated and, thankfully, after breakfast he made the decision to pull the pin on the 4x400m relay team. I was so happy because it had been a traumatic 24 hours.
It was all forgotten about by the time I got back home to see Sharon and promptly told my coach I wanted to be an Olympian the next year.
‘I want to go to Athens for the 100m. I want to qualify.’
She was a bit taken aback.
I knew that in 2004 I’d be stepping up to the senior height in the hurdles – from 76 centimetres to 84 centimetres – and that it would be too soon for me to adjust in time to make the Olympics.
That’s why I was pushing the idea of being a sprinter more than a hurdler, because I was desperate for another taste of the big time.
Things had certainly changed, and it wasn’t just my mindset. Life was starting to get serious and I even got myself a manager.