07.05.2009

100 days to go: Thomas counts down to Berlin

Countless words were used to describe Tristan Thomas across a stellar domestic season but ask the 22-year-old Tasmanian for the one word to sum up how he feels just 100 days out from the biggest athletics meet of his career and the answer is simple: like a catalyst.

“I feel like there’s a chemical reaction that could happen and it’s there just waiting for that moment,” Thomas said.

On the verge of his first world championships campaign the hurdles specialist is counting down the days to August 15, when he will be joined by 43 of Australia’s top athletes in Berlin for nine days of athletics action.

Thomas’ world championships debut follows an outstanding domestic season for the gun runner that saw 11 personal best times set over the 100m, 200m, 400m, 400m hurdles and 800m.

In March Thomas claimed his second consecutive national 400m hurdles title – an event in which he is unbeaten in 2009 – and capped his stellar year with Male Athlete of the Australian Season honours.

But for all the accolades of the recent season the attention of the athletics community is now firmly fixed on the 12th IAAF world championships and for Thomas, the next set of goals on the road to international acclaim.

“I have big goals for the competition, I certainly want to be someone who performs better internationally than domestically so I feel excited about the event and I’m excited I’ve got the next 100 days to get to where I need to be,” he said.

“I’m the kind of person who will definitely get more and more excited as the event draws near, this is the first major competition where I’ve been selected in the team months and months in advance so this is the first time I’ve had a real preparation leading into a championships.

“I guess for me it’s exciting that I get to actually shoot for the stars with a goal that’s set in concrete; it’s like the team’s going, you’ve got a ticket and it’s just a matter of how far that ticket will take you.”

While he’s no stranger to the world stage, with Commonwealth Games, World Cup and Commonwealth Youth Games representation already under his belt, the step up to the world championships start line will be a significant leap for Thomas and his 18 fellow Australians on debut in Berlin.

But far from being daunted by the task ahead, Thomas is ready to take on the world.

“It’s hard to say how I’ll go given I haven’t really competed at this level in my athletics career,” Thomas said.

“I’ve raced against people of this calibre before at the World Cup in 2006 but I was very immature as an athlete.

“Hurdles is an event that takes years to mature in and I certainly wasn’t where I wanted to be but now I’m starting to grow into the event and to get a bit of knowledge up and I think it’s exciting because I know how good these people are but I don’t have it ingrained in my head that I should lose.”

Nor should he.

In February Thomas lowered his best mark in the event to 48.86, notching wins over Beijing Olympic bronze medallist Bershawn Jackson (USA) and Commonwealth Games champion LJ van Zyl (RSA) along the way.

He will enter the world championships as the second fastest Australian over the 400m hurdles in history, trailing only Rohan Robinson’s run of 48.28 on the all-time list.

Now, with just 100 days until Berlin, Thomas is out to conquer his own very personal goals on the world stage.

“My goals have got to be personal goals,” he said.

“I can’t say that I want to beat this person or I want to beat that person because in the end I have no determination of how everyone else goes, so for that reason I’d like to run better than I did domestically as far as times go and I’d certainly like to handle the situation well.

“I’ve never really run three rounds flat out before so for me it’s still a developmental period where I’d just like to say at the end of it that I handled the situation well.

”If I make the final it would be amazing and it’s certainly a goal of mine and if that does happen I’ll be really proud of what I’ve achieved but if I don’t and I still run as well I can I’ll also be happy.”

Rewind the clock 100 days and the athletics community could not have predicted the heights Thomas would reach across a show-stopping Australian season.

Fast-forward through the next 100 days and it’s anyone’s guess how far the flaming-haired hurdler can go, with predictions he’s in better shape today than at the time of his national title defence. 

“I think I’ve got a lot more work in my legs now than I did going into the end of last season,” Thomas said.

“By the time the national championships came about I actually had the media asking if I thought I’d cooked it too much or I’d peaked for the Sydney Track Classic because my form, while it got good again, wasn’t as crash hot as when I ran against Bershawn.

“I was really itching to get into the off-season. I didn’t have a long break, I had one week off and then got back into heavy training so I’ve now had six weeks of hard training and I’m a lot fitter than I was coming into the end of last season.

“Whether or not I get the time on the board, I think mentally I’m developing into where I need to be to get a better time down the track.”

So how good can he get?

For Thomas, it’s all in the mind.

“As long as I continue to stay injury-free and I continue to put the miles in my legs and put the extra kilos on in the weights room I’ve got a little bit to go physically, but I think the bigger gains can be made mentally,” he said.

“I think for me the reason last season was such a step up was because I started to believe it could happen.

“I found out early on that Bershawn Jackson and LJ van Zyl were coming over to race and where a few years ago I would have been petrified, this year I really wanted to have a crack at that.

“I think if I can continue with that mentality and go into the world championships with this attitude that if I don’t win it doesn’t matter but everything I do is a plus, I don’t see why anything couldn’t happen."