By Maria Hawthorne
LONDON, July 23 AAP - Jana Pittman will be the womanto beat in the 400m hurdles at next month’s worldchampionships in Paris, Britain’s top women’s hurdlerNatasha Danvers said today.
Danvers, 25, ran a personal best of 54.02 to finishsecond behind the Australian at the Rome Golden Leaguemeeting a fortnight ago and said Pittman, the fastestwoman in the world this year, was an incredible athlete.
The win was Pittman’s second of the Golden Leaguemeetings, following her disappointing third place behindAmerican Sandra Glover and Romania’s Ionela Tirlea inParis.
But Danvers, a promising junior athlete who has onlybegun fulfilling her potential this year, said shebelieved she was capable of beating Pittman.
Jana is an exceptional athlete and if I do beatJana, I will have to really extend myself to do so,''Danvers, who has lowered her personal best three timesthis year, told reporters. Hurdles is one of those things, anything can happenand whoever gets it right on that particular day will bethe winner.
I mean Jana had a bad day in Paris, she came third.Nobody would have even dreamed it prior to that race,but you have to be the one who's ready on that day.'' Danvers missed out on a bronze medal at last year'sCommonwealth Games after she clipped the final hurdleand crashed to the track, and has spent the past yearworking on her approach to the hurdle in the last 100metres. It still is the weakest part of my race but it’s notas bad as it was. I haven’t fallen this year,’’ shesaid.
She will marry her coach Darrell Smith in Los Angelesthis November and off the track has been writing songswith a US record producer, one of which has beenrecorded for an upcoming CD by an as-yet unknownAmerican singer.
It was important to have interests away fromathletics, she said.
You can't let it consume you. You have to havesomething outside, otherwise when things don't go well,you go nuts,'' she said. I will be disappointed, devastated, if things don’tgo well. But just like with the Commonwealth Games, Ican’t stay in that moment.
``It was a moment, it’s over, you can either go downfrom there, let it consume you, get distraught, loseyourself in that – or you can take that moment and sayI’m not going to let that happen again, I’m going toimprove, and make it something positive.’’