AUSSIE SPRINT STAR’S DAILY MOBILE MOTIVATOR
ELLA Nelson won’t let herself forget how close she came to an Olympic 200m final 13 months ago.
The screensaver on the Australian sprinter’s phone is a photo of the finish line of her Games heat, where after a strong run she was beaten by the narrowest of margins.
The truth is she was even closer than that to qualifying for the medal race, with a competitor in a rival heat pipping her time by just 0.01 seconds.
But the screensaver says it all for Nelson, 23. It acts as the ultimate confirmation that she is good enough to succeed on the world’s biggest stages.
“I will never forget it,” she recalled.
“I was really, really close but that definitely made me realise that I can make those finals and I can be up there and I can medal at a Commonwealth Games
“I think I finished fourth in the Commonwealth at Rio so for me that was a lot of motivation.”
She is hungry to go one better – at least – and medal in front of her home crowd when the Commonwealth Games heads Down Under to the Gold Coast in April.
The Sydney-born runner usually bases herself in Phoenix, Arizona where she trains with a talented group including Canadian sensation Andre De Grasse but is enjoying a month-long break in Australia to recover from a taxing World Championships campaign.
Despite an encouraging preparation, Nelson struggled at the London showpiece last month. It’s left her pumped to rip into training once more upon returning to the States on September 24.