YOUNG TALENT TIME
SALLY’S ON THE SIDELINE, SO WHO WILL TAKE UP THE BATON?
SHE has been the track and field team’s security blanket for the best part of a decade.
If Sally Pearson was fit that generally meant medals were being won and in a team struggling for stars her success helped cover the deficiencies elsewhere.
The hurdles champion delivering made the Australian public happy, and it also made the Sports Commission and those with the purse strings more positive about athletics.
Since her shock Olympic silver medal at Beijing in 2008 Pearson has won Olympic gold, two world titles and two Commonwealth crowns.
Walker Jared Tallent has been the only other consistent contributor on the medals front over that time.
He’s not competing at the Gold Coast because of injury which adds another layer to Pearson’s withdrawal yesterday. So who steps up?
The track and field team, which numbers 107, is the second largest in Commonwealth Games history.
It’s predominantly a young team with only a handful of gold medal contenders now that its co-captain has gone.
Team management was desperate for a spike after what was a disastrous Glasgow 2014 campaign where the head coach was sent home in disgrace after a public blow-up with Pearson.
They won nine medals in total, six gold and three bronze, which was the worst since 1934.
With no Pearson, where do six gold medals come on the Gold Coast?
Dani Stevens in the discus is a lock to defend her crown with the 2009 world champion enjoying a career resurrection which was capped off by the silver medal at last year’s world championships in London.
Javelin thrower Kathryn Mitchell has set the Australian record in the lead-up and should improve on her fourth place in Glasgow.
A lack of depth in the walks should see us clean up in both the men and women, with Dane Bird-Smith, the bronze medallist from the 2016 Rio Olympics, to start favourite in the men’s 20km event.
Australia should find success in the marathon also, with defending men’s champion Michael Shelley racing on his home turf.
Lisa Weightman and Jess Trengove will be hard to beat in the women’s.
One rising star who could take the next step is pole vaulter Kurtis Marschall.
His idol Steve Hooker announced himself at the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games and then two years later he was an Olympic champion.
Marschall, 20, finished seventh in the world championships final last year.
Queensland schoolgirl sprinter Riley Day has star written all over her, but a medal might be a bridge too far given the 200m is stacked with talent including Jamaica’s dual Olympic champion Elaine Thompson.
Two-time Commonwealth Games heptathlon gold medallist Jane Flemming was confident the Australian team would not fall apart without Pearson.
“The management of this team has enough experience to make sure that won’t happen,” she said.
“He (head coach Craig Hilliard) will be saying to them to concentrate on what they’re doing in their event and he’ll be telling them, ‘Sally will be there to cheer you on, but you don’t need to worry about her’.”