Barber let out breath and threw to victory

KELSEY-LEE Barber closed her eyes, let out a deep breath and tried to loosen her shoulders.

She could hear the message in her head from her husband/ coach Mike sitting behind her in the stand.

“Find the calm in the moment,” was what he’d told her leading into the world championships javelin final.

She was sitting in fourth position. This was her last throw. It was all or nothing. She needed that calm.

A slight change to her runup before the previous throw had felt good. Mike had liked what he’d seen.

After seeing the fifth throw get out to 63.65m he turned to Australian team coach Craig Hilliard next to him and said: “I reckon she might have this.”

He liked her body language. He also knew she had a track record of producing in the final round of competitions. The bigger the stakes the better she went.

“She just has this innate ability,” he would say later.

The moment Kelsey-lee let the javelin go she knew it was clean. And for javelin throwers clean means good and more often than not it means big.

She was sure it was over 65 metres but wasn’t sure by how much. Then she saw the electronic screen flash up 66.56 and she lost it.

“My head was spinning a bit and then I was like wait, I can't celebrate too early,” KelseyLee said.

She’d just produced one of the great clutch moments in Australian sport but again she had to “find the calm” as there were three throwers remaining in the competition.

The two Chinese girls – one who’d won her past 12 competitions – had been the hot favourites coming into the event but they’d never faced this sort of pressure.

They both failed to handle it which meant Australia had its ninth track and field world champion and first ever in the javelin.