Tallent a shoo-in for race walking
Car crash and giving birth not enough to slow down super mum Claire
TWO weeks after being hit by a car and eight months after giving birth to son Harvey, Australian race walking’s supermum Claire Tallent is bound for the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.
Eight years after she won a silver medal in the 20km walk in Delhi, Tallent continued her remarkable return to the sport in Adelaide yesterday by finishing third in the national championships to all but seal selection.
If becoming a mum and working four days a week wasn’t enough to juggle, the 36-year-old has revealed her preparation was rocked a fortnight ago when she was hit by a car and hasn’t trained on the roads since.
“I went up on the bonnet and had my life flash before me, not so much because the car hit me at any great pace but it was a moment in time where I was like ‘oh crap I’m going to come off this bonnet and is this car going to run over the top of me?’ ” Tallent said.
“I’ve still got some remnants (scarring) of it on my knee and it put the wind up me, I haven’t trained on the roads since, so I’ve just been on the bike paths and around the weir ever since and really focused.”
Cheered on by Harvey and husband Jared – an Olympic gold medallist who was sidelined with a hamstring injury – Tallent finished third behind NSW’s Beki Smith and Victorian Jemima Montag.
Harvey spent the past two nights with his grandma so Tallent could get some decent sleep leading into the race and it paid off with her time of 1hr 31mins 29secs just three minutes outside her PB set in 2012.
“IT was so much fun to be out there and so good to be back at the national championships,” she said.
There were dramatic scenes at the end of the men’s race where Queenslander Dane Bird-Smith was the first Australian across the line in fifth and had to be helped from the course after collapsing.
Sweden’s Perseus Karlstrom won the men’s 20km event in 1hr 20mins 30secs.