Sally clears final hurdle
ONE OF THE GREATS CALLS TIME ON HER STELLAR CAREER
HURDLING superstar Sally Pearson (right) has no regrets after calling time on one of the greatest Australian sporting careers, acknowledging that her battered body can take no more punishment. The 32-year-old won gold in the 100m hurdles at the 2012 London Olympics and is a two-time world champion.
LYING on her bed, Sally Pearson pushed back tears from her cheeks and closed her laptop.
For the little girl who once counted hurdles in her sleep and the Olympic champion who kept her podium dreams under her pillow, there’s great irony in where Pearson made her toughest call.
A week before yesterday’s shock announcement to retire immediately from the track after 16 years at the elite level, Pearson held a 50-minute Skype session with her London-based psychologist.
The 32-year-old speaks with her psychologist every three months. But this laptop chat was as good as over before it began.
It’s just that Pearson, suffering from her fifth injury since March, didn’t know it. Or more so, the driven competitor, didn’t want to acknowledge it.
“I went into the psychology session upset and in tears and then I started talking and I wasn’t good,’’ Pearson said.
Hampered and hobbling since March with a run of injures that includes a quad tear, calf tear, hamstring strain, knee strain and then most recently an achilles injury, Pearson was 12 months out from the Tokyo Olympics and unable to take a step each morning without pain in her foot.
So when the fearless champion, who won hurdles gold at every major championships including Olympics, world championships, world indoors, Commonwealth Games and World Cup, dialled London last Tuesday night it was in a ball of anger, frustration and aggression.
“That afternoon I was angry, grumpy and upset. I was walking the dogs and I was frustrated, but I didn’t know why,’’ Pearson said.
“I wasn’t making the decision [to retire]. I was just really cranky and really unhappy.
“And I was like, ‘what is making me feel like this right now?’ Obviously it was the achilles injury and then I was speaking to my psychologist and she goes, ‘What you’re doing right now, you’re trying to grab evidence to make a decision to retire’. I said: ‘I think you’re right’.”
Pearson closed her laptop, turned to her husband Kieran and said: “I think I’m done.”
Pearson retires as one of Australia’s greatest track stars and also our most endearing
At her press announcement yesterday, Pearson said gold in London represented the pinnacle of her career, but added her gold at the 2017 world titles, after missing the Rio Olympics with a torn hamstring, was just as special. crippling