By Mike Hurst
COMMONWEALTH Games discus gold medallist Benn Harradine would have been a wrecking-ball in the NRL for his hometown team the Newcastle Knights.
But the young giant _ stronger than any footballer ever _ has been forced to restrict himself to the athletics field rather than the football field because he was born with a life-threatening health condition.
I was never permitted to play footie as a youngster because I was born with congenital hepatic fibrosis. It's like scar tissue covering the liver,'' Harradine revealed yesterday. I can’t drink and can’t play contact sport. I’ve got to manage myself carefully.’’
Still, at 28 he is shaping as a medal chance for the world athletics championships in Daegu, Korea, this year and for the Olympic Games in London next year.
In Halle, Germany in the second competition of his build-up in Europe, Harradine threw the discus 66.07m to place third behind world champion Robert Harting. He beat three-time Olympic gold medallist Virgilius Alekna.
At 199cm tall and a lean 115kg, Harradine is ridiculously athletic. He routinely does gymnastics to improve his balance and coordination, with a backward roll into a hand-spring or a head-spring.
``You can be physically strong in the gym but the whole idea of being athletic is to be able to move your body in all different planes,’’ said Harradine.
But he is strong in the conventional sense with stunning weightlifting efforts including 170kg clean, a double of 225kg in the benchpress, a snatch of 130kg and a set of five half-squats (90-degrees bend at the knees) with 305kg.
And placing it all in perspective, while horsing around at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi last October he won a 100m race in training flats _ reliably clocked by sprinter-hurdler Sally Pearson’s coach Sharon Hannan at 10.9sec. That is faster than any footballer _ wearing spikes _ ran at Homebush in the Usain Bolt invitation meet at Homebush last September.
Around the same time, Harradine competed at the IAAF World Cup in Split, throwing the discus a personal best 66.45m. He settled for the silver medal, beaten in the final round by a mere 11cm by Germany’s world titleholder Robert Harting.
Yet the thrill of the game still draws Harradine to the NRL.
``We athletes work our backsides off for the opportunity to compete even once in front of a crowd of 50,000 to 80,000. To have the chance to do that week-in, week-out running the ball up in rugby league would be absolutely bone chilling,’’ Harradine enthused.
``But my liver condition made the choice for me. I’m quite healthy, but the condition means I can’t take hits to the liver or spleen because I’ve only got 60 per cent of my liver working and my spleen is four times larger than normal, so if I took a hit in the spleen _ which is where footballers put their shoulders into a tackle _ it would be curtains for Benny Harradine.
``But I still can’t help thinking what I’ve become as a discus thrower and I wonder what kind of damage I could have done on a football field.’’
One thing for sure, if Harradine was on the end of it, he would redefine the idea of a ``swinging arm.’’