SALLY SAYS IT’S A PAIN
BUT SHE’S OK FOR GAMES:
GOLD Coast champion Sally Pearson insists she will win a “painful’’ fitness battle with achilles tendon soreness and be able to pursue a hat-trick of Commonwealth Games 100m hurdles gold medals.
Pearson admitted last night it remained to be seen how much a lost month of technical hurdles training since the start of the domestic season impacts on her capacity to race near her best at her home city Games in 14 days.
Pearson will go into the Gold Coast Games without an individual hurdles race in five weeks after she bypassed the 100m hurdles at the second of two Games warm-up meets in Brisbane last night.
The world champion, one of the faces of the Games, said she was relieved with how she ran the first leg in Australia’s 4x100m relay hitout at the State Athletics Facility.
Pearson, Maddie Coates, Riley Day and Melissa Breen finished second in 43.76sec to England (43.20sec), which the Gold Coaster said was the fastest by an Australian quartet since 2011.
Asked if she was in danger of not being able to run in the Games hurdles heats on April 12, Pearson said: “I think I will definitely be right to race.
“It’s more a question of whether my confidence will be right to race ... having missed a lot of technique work takes its toll. The pain is there but it’s manageable and I’ve been training really well. I’m running against many of the best in the world so I have to be on my game.
“Winning the gold medal will be difficult but I will do everything I possibly can.’’
Pearson’s last hurdles race was in the first week of March when she was eliminated in the semi-finals of the 60m hurdles at world indoor titles in Birmingham, England.
“I was pretty down a few weeks ago,’’ she said. “It was difficult to do my technical work over the hurdles, that’s what hurt me the most.”
Pearson said the injury is to her right foot, which former Commonwealth Games heptathlon gold medallist Jane Flemming said was preferable to it being to a hurdler’s left leg.