The nature of top sport

Joseph Romanos writes...


I did feel sorry for Beatrice Faumuina today.


Faumuina finished a disappointing fifth in the women’s discus. If she’d been near her best, she’d have won a medal and if she could rewind the clock a few years to when she was hurling the discus 65 metres, she’d have sauntered off with the gold medal.


The New Zealand camp was very excited at the track today. Nikki Hamblin ran her second courageous final of the games and earned a silver medal in the 800m, to go with the silver she picked up in the 1500m a few days ago.

And Andrea Miller produced a rare hurdles medal for New Zealand. She finished sensationally well to snatch a bronze in the final lunge to the tape.


While New Zealanders at the track were frothing about Hamblin and Miller, Faumuina drifted towards the changing room, stopping to chat to her fellow competitors, a couple of supporters and the smattering of media.

Yet of all the athletes in the arena today, few have the credentials of the woman who for several years was known as “Queen Bea”. She is at her fifth Commonwealth Games, and already has a silver and two gold medals tucked away at home. Then there was the small matter of the world title she won in 1997.
She was the best discus thrower in the world at that time and meeting promoters eagerly bid for her to compete at their events.


Now, about to turn 36, Faumuina is not the thrower she was.


She changed coaches a couple of years ago and said she had enjoyed working with Ross Dallow. However, Dallow was unable to be in Delhi and Faumuina seemed a little bereft without him.


Also, she is not as highly-funded as she was when she was winning gold medals and had to work this past winter and train part-time.


Still she hoped things would turn out right on the night, but they didn’t. Her sequence of throws - 56.15m, no throw, 55.31m, 57.79m, no throw, 54.83m – was unremarkable and she just didn’t seem able to capture the spark that made her such a feared competitor.


However, that’s the nature of top sport. You have to enjoy your time in the sun, because it sometimes doesn’t last long.


Hamblin said she had tried to keep herself in check after her 1500m medal because she still had the 800m to go. “There might be a few celebrations now,” she said.


She is no Peter Snell, biding her time then striking on the final bend with a withering burst.
Rather she wins by slowing down less than her opponents. She shrugs off the pain and fights every step of the way. Her reward for that sort of courage is two silver medals.


Miller’s bronze was the bigger surprise. She lives on the Gold Coast and trains with the top Australian hurdlers, including today’s 100m hurdles race winner, Sally Pearson.


Therefore she slipped under the radar a little. She did not loom as a potential medallist before the race, but when you’re young and keen and desperate to prove yourself, it’s amazing what you can do.
You have to go back a long way to find the previous New Zealand hurdler to win a Commonwealth Games medal. By my reckoning it was Dutch Holland in 1950, and even then it was in the 440 yards hurdles, not the sprint.

So Miller was really breaking new ground today.


Such is the cycle of top sport. We possibly farewell one of our biggest names in athletics, even while saluting the emergence to two more women’s stars.


Joseph Romanos