Aussies Target 2012

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Destination London: the race is on

Jenny McAsey | November 15, 2008
The Australian

IT is the black hole of Australian athletics.

Talented juniors rise through the ranks, scooping up medals at national schools championships and even beyond to the international stage.

A few steely characters, such as Olympic 100m hurdles silver medallist Sally McLellan, negotiate their way through the maze from junior to senior athletics, but many more don’t make it.

Typically they train for a year or two after they leave school but then disappear into the world of study and work and relationships.

At 15, Wollongong school girl Jaimee-Lee Starr was one of the world’s most promising 400m runners, clocking 53.78sec to win a bronze medal at the world youth (under-18) championships.

But in the five years since, Starr, now a married woman of 20, has improved by only a second and has stood on the edge of that black hole.

Now Athletics Australia has developed a program to provide a safety harness and pathway for athletes like Starr, aimed at keeping them in the sport to the London Olympics at least.

Target 2012 began on Thursday when 22 athletes from around the country, including a rejuvenated Starr, gathered in Melbourne for a four-day camp.

“Getting into this squad has given me a push and a wake-up call, and I have something to work towards now,” Starr said yesterday.

All were born between 1985 and 1988 and AA believes they have the potential to perform strongly at the next Games.

Five members - Lachlan Renshaw (800m), Jeff Riseley (1500m), Joel Milburn (400m), Dylan Grant (400m) and discus thrower Dani Samuels - went to the Beijing Games, and want to avoid being on Australia’s long list of one-Olympics wonders.

Take Georgie Clarke, the 16-year-old prodigy in the 2000 Olympic team. The world junior (under-20) 800m gold medallist in 1999, she competed in the 1500m in Sydney and was touted as a potential superstar.

Clarke is still running but has not been to another Olympics. It is the same story with 800m runner Grant Cremer. The world junior 800m bronze medallist in 1996, he went to the Sydney Olympics when he was 22 but has since vanished from the sport.

AA’s national youth performance manager Sara Mulkearns said it was important to stop athletes falling by the wayside.

“Post the Olympics we need to wrap our arms around this emerging group of athletes,” Mulkearns said. "We have four years now to get these athletes right for 2012, because sometimes they fall between the gaps, especially females.

"Some come out of year 12 and their talent has got them to where they are, then the next step is massive, so that is the gap we need to get right.

“We can’t pay them the money to keep them in the sport full-time, so it becomes a juggling act. They are trying to keep balls in the air with education, work, training, and it takes a lot of organisation and desire to get to that next stage.”

It can become a lonely journey, long hours at the track while mates are out earning a living and partying. Renshaw decided a year ago he would forgo the parties and put his energy into athletics.

It paid dividends when he was selected for Beijing but he failed to make it out of his 800m heat.

“AA have set up a platform for us, aiming to peak in London. It will keep us focused,” Renshaw said. “It is a hard sport and it is an individual sport, so these sort of team activities make you feel like you belong.”

Even though AA is cash-strapped, it has made the program a priority for the next four years. More athletes will be added later - for example ACT sprinter Melissa Breen, 18, is a future contender after her breakthrough 11.33sec 100m last weekend.

“Our athletes get a lot of nurturing until 20 and then suddenly we say ‘you are a senior athlete’,” Mulkearns said.

“In some events, like the throws or distance running, it might take five or six years to develop the strength or stamina needed to make a senior team.”

However, their place will be reviewed each year. Starr, for example, won’t take part in the program’s international racing schedule next year unless she meets targets.

“This program is absolutely spot on for Jaimee-Lee,” Mulkearns says. "This is make or break time with her. Talent has got her a fair way at a young age but now it is about digging in and doing everything right.

“If any of them don’t perform they won’t stay in the program, but we would like to think this is the core of the group we are going to work with through to 2012.”

No longer just jumping for joyFont Size: Decrease Increase Print Page: Print Jenny McAsey | November 15, 2008
Article from: The Australian
WHAT drives a hurdler who has to leap barriers on the track only to run into brick walls off it?

For 18 months, Justin Merlino, 23, has had reasonable cause to think Athletics Australia’s selectors don’t want him in the sport.

Twice he has achieved at least the minimum qualifying standard - for last year’s world championships and this year’s Beijing Olympics - only to be spurned and left off the national team.

The selection rules have been flexible and discretion used for other young athletes, but never for Merlino, even though he is Australia’s second-fastest 110m hurdler in history with the 13.55sec he ran in March last year.

It would be enough to make most athletes give it away and spend their time on easier pursuits than trying to sprint-hurdle the straight in just over 13sec.

But it is a sign of Merlino’s composed character and strong desire to succeed that he has not become disillusioned.

“A lot of people told me I should have thrown my hands up and spat the dummy but that is not going to change anything,” Merlino said yesterday. “I used it as a fire-in-the-belly thing, to motivate me.”

Not that it hasn’t hurt. His lowest point came this year, when he twice ran the B-qualifying standard for the Olympics (under 13.72sec), but could not crack the 13.55sec A-qualifying time needed for automatic selection.

He had to watch as other athletes who only had the B standard, including long jumper Fabrice Lapierre and marathoner Lisa-Jane Weightman, were sent to Beijing.

“It is hard, especially because they are so inconsistent with their selections,” Merlino said. “They seem to bend the rules for some but not others. In some ways I think, ‘what have they got against me’ but it is out of my control.”

“It is a little bit unfair and what happens is that it drives people out of the sport, but it is not going to drive me out of the sport because I love it and enjoy the training.”

Even after the selectors, led by Melbourne lawyer Peter Fitzgerald, indicated he was not in contention for the Games, in May Merlino went to a pre-Olympics competition in Beijing to run against Chinese star Liu Xiang.

He relished the learning and motivation that came from competing alongside the 2004 Olympic champion and former 110m world record-holder.

And even as he watched the Olympics a few months later from his home in Sydney, he kept training.

Then, last month, Merlino finally got a bit of love from AA - a dollop of reward and recognition for his persistence.

AA’s youth manager Sara Mulkearns rang to say he was included in the new Target 2012 program, an initiative to guide emerging athletes to the London Olympics.

“Without getting technical about selections, he has been a bit stiff,” Mulkearns said. "You think, ‘oh the poor kid’.

"This program is fantastic for him. He was stoked and was the first to get his paperwork in. He was so happy to be recognised, to know AA was looking at him and saying he is the future.

“The inward drive is huge in that young man.”

Coached by Fira Dvoskina, a former Ukraine hurdler who has been coaching for 50 years, Merlino said being part of the program was a confidence boost.

“It means they do see potential in me, and it was hard to see that in the past couple of years,” he said.

“It shows they do believe in me to have a shot for the London Games. We are in the program but it doesn’t mean we are going to be on the team. I still have to put in the performances.”