26.08.2009

Future bright for the Australian Flame

Fairfax reporter Dan Silkstone says the future of athletics in Australia is bright.

Australia left Berlin's Olympic Stadium (this week) with its best result at a world championships, overcoming injuries to a host of established champions by uncovering the next generation of track and field stars.

Defending world champions Jana Pittman-Rawlinson and Nathan Deakes were missing through injury. World championship bronze medallist Craig Mottram was also absent and Beijing silver medallist Sally McLellan competed but was slightly off her best after receiving a back injury. And yet Australia leaves with two gold medals and two bronze, pledging to ''take care of business'' at next year's Commonwealth Games.

The team did it with a mixture of youthful exuberance and the class of Steve Hooker - who comes out of these championships with his reputation further enhanced. Australia took notice after the way Hooker won in Beijing, and the world was mightily impressed with the way he claimed an epic pole vault win here.

Hooker's courage aside, the excitement was with emerging talents Dani Samuels and Mitchell Watt. ''Two 21-year-olds with medals around their necks, that can only be good for Australia going forward,'' Australian team high-performance director Eric Hollingsworth said. ''We've left people at home like Jana, Nathan Deakes and (javelin thrower) Jarrod Bannister, who is world No. 2, and we've still come up with some medal performances. When you group that bunch together we've got a mix, in football parlance, of experience and youth.''

Another 21-year-old, walker Jessica Rothwell, was tipped as a possible future medallist in London by Hollingsworth after her impressive debut in the 20km walk. Middle-distance runner Jeff Riseley and hurdler Tristan Thomas - who grabbed bronze with a huge effort in the 4x400m relay - were other youngsters to show big improvement.

The relay team of John Steffensen, Ben Offereins, Thomas and Sean Wroe celebrated its come-from-behind effort with a group hug after Wroe crossed the finish line behind the US and British teams. Australia, lacking a genuine superstar in the 400m relay, had plenty of depth but needed to produce its best to figure on the podium. It did just that, nailing its season's best time of 3:00.90.

''This is one of the best experiences and relay teams I've worked with,'' said Steffensen, the team's elder statesman. ''It's a testament to all of them … absolutely great guys to work with.''

The Australians had believed all week that they were a good chance to sneak a medal if they could make the final. They almost missed out after finishing fourth in their heat but scraped through and took full advantage when it mattered.

''All the guys believed it and we really were a great team,'' Steffensen said. ''Ben showed his quality, Tristan showed his quality, everybody just did what they had to do. It was just a beautiful experience to culminate such a good championships that Australia has had.''

Steffensen, struggling in the lead-up with hamstring problems, had been held aside from the heats to keep him fresh for the final. Leading off, he handed over the baton with Australia in seventh place. Later, he foreshadowed possible retirement, saying: ''I came into the sport with a silver medal, I could go out with a bronze.''

The Australian team, rebranded as the Australian Flame, goes into next year's Commonwealth Games in India full of confidence. Britain also performed well in Berlin, South Africa was strong, Jamaica dominant in the sprints and a host of African countries figured in the distance events. Delhi is firming as a top event for track and field and Hollingsworth said Australia would take a big team of up to 90 athletes, with the aim of topping the medal tally there.

Australia lost the Commonwealth Games athletics medal tally to England in Manchester in 2002 but won back supremacy in Melbourne. ''I'm very keen to re-establish that and go away from England and some of the other countries,'' Hollingsworth said. ''We'll take care of business again.''

Hollingsworth had made changes to the set-up since being appointed as high-performance director of the team late last year. Efforts were made to bring individual athlete's coaches such as Sharon Hannan, who mentors McLellan, and Denis Knowles, coach of Dani Samuels, into the national team set-up. Emphasis was placed on fostering better team spirit and the popular Hooker appointed captain. Australia came in with exciting young talents. ''We just hoped they could cope with the pressure,'' Hollingsworth said.

That was the main thing he had wanted to see from Australia's athletes in Berlin. It was something he had identified as a weakness in recent times - athletes who produced personal-best times in minor competitions but could not reproduce them in the heat of the Olympics or world championships.

This article first appeared in The Age