HAMMER BLOW: FUNDING MODEL LEAVES RISING TALENT WITHOUT EQUIPMENT

At primary school, Ellen was labelled “fat’’ by other kids and believed that sport wasn’t an option for children like her.

“I thought being slim or skinny was a prerequisite for any sport,” she said.

Then she enrolled in Little Athletics.

By Year 4 she had her first South Coast Regional Athletics uniform and soon she had state and national medals in shot put and discus.

“Little Athletics has shaped the woman and athlete I am today and gave me the opportunity to realise the power and strength of my body,” she said.

Now 22, Scott-Young is studying at Princeton University in the US and excelling at hammer throw due to the skills she learnt in Australia’s premier youth athletics program.

Last year when she returned home to visit family, she thought she would be able to continue training in the Coast’s new world-standard facilities.

“I arrived with excited expectations that I would have access to a new throwing facil- ity, or at least a new hammer cage after the Commonwealth Games ended but I was wrong,” she said.

“It was incredibly disheartening to be told that both throwing cages constructed for the Games had been sold to Cairns.

“Now the Gold Coast has only one cage accessible for hammer throw and the cage is in terrible shape which is embarrassing for a modern city, and a modern nation.”

Her former coach Brett Green is one of many who are struggling to comprehend the lack of support for the Olympics cornerstone sport.

Green has been forced to train his throwers at Helensvale State High School where he teaches because of the Gold Coast’s lack of facilities.

“Something needs to happen because we have nowhere to train,” he said.

“It’s not like we can rock up somewhere and start throwing like the local footy team rocks up the park with a ball.

“I find it strange how they can spend a few million on some lights on the highway but they can’t find money for something like this.”

Gold Coast is expected to launch a bid to host the World Athletics Championships as soon as 2025, leaving some to wonder how better the equipment sold off could have been used.