‘Everything is coming to fruition’
Kiwi hammer thrower now dares to dream after her special Olympic-sized achievement in Hastings. By
WHEN the numbers 73.55 flashed up on the electronic screen in Hastings on the opening day of athletics’ national championships, hammer thrower Julia Ratcliffe thought to herself, ‘‘oh well, I got close’’.
The 27-year-old Hamilton athlete actually didn’t click at the time, in the fourth round of an absorbing women’s hammer throw competition, that she had just followed up an opening Olympic qualifier with an even better effort to reclaim the New Zealand record she had given up to Canterbury rival Lauren Bruce last year.
‘‘I was stoked that it was a little bit further, but in all the hype I thought the record was 20cm further than it was, so I was like, ‘12cm to go’,’’ Ratcliffe tells the Sunday Star-Times as she relives her special afternoon in the Bay. ‘‘I didn’t even realise. Then they were taking forever because they have to remeasure it to make it official, and I was, ‘what’s taking so long?’ They said they were measuring the record. I was, ‘whose record?’ Turns out it was my record.’’
It was indeed. Ratcliffe’s competition went like this: a firstround throw of 73.40 metres, which was a PB (by over a metre) and well past the Olympic qualifying mark of 72.50m; a foul; 71.13m; then that 73.55m, which surpassed Bruce’s national record of 73.47 by a breezy 8cm; and then two more fouls to finish.
Bruce, who had already qualified for Tokyo, was second with a best of 72.67m.
Hammer throwers can toil away for months, years even, without making a dent on milestone marks. Ratcliffe had just thrown two in one series. She had booked her ticket to Tokyo (and a special slice of history), then reclaimed a New Zealand record she holds pretty dear to her heart. You could say it was some day at the office.
‘‘My initial reaction every time I throw really well is kinda disbelief, which is dumb,’’ says the Commonwealth Games gold medallist after a few days to reflect. ‘‘I’ve been training fulltime for how many years now? You just never quite want to let yourself believe it’s possible sometimes, especially with all the Covid stuff going on. The more hope you have, you build yourself up to be knocked down.’’
So in a way relief was the prevailing emotion, though there was eventually plenty of excitement to go with it.
‘‘When you’ve been working for something for so long and you finally achieve it, you’re kind of ‘I’ve told a bunch of people I can do it, I’ve told myself I can do it’, but there’s always that doubt in
the back of your mind . . . so to finally come through and achieve that was huge.’’
For this Princeton graduate who works part-time for the Reserve Bank, her big day out in Hastings had been the ‘‘culmination of 16 years of training’’. Half her life, she notes wryly. All of it under the astute direction of her father Dave who is her coach, and often biggest critic.
‘‘I don’t think he’s stopped smiling since Friday night,’’ observes the athlete. ‘‘He is absolutely chuffed. It’s his achievement as much as mine. I wouldn’t be here without him.’’
‘‘It was my sister’s 30th at the weekend, so we hightailed it back from Hastings to Hamilton on Saturday morning . . . it was a big weekend for the family all round.’’
It was a big weekend for hammer throw. New Zealand has never sent a female athlete to the Olympics in the discipline (Murray Cheater was the only previous Kiwi, in 1976 in Montreal). Now there will be two in Tokyo, and they have the fourth and fifth best throws respectively in the world this year (admittedly early in the season).
Funnily enough, the previous time Ratcliffe had been at the Hastings track things had not quite unfurled so successfully. That January evening she had three straight no-throws to tumble out of the Potts Classic competition won by Bruce in 72.28m.
‘‘That actually wasn’t as bad a meet as it looked on paper for me,’’ she recalls. ‘‘They were some of my furthest throws ever but were just outside the line, so didn’t count. We actually took quite a bit of positivity from that.’’
In fact, with that in mind, Dave Ratcliffe gave his daughter a simple message ahead of the nationals. ‘‘Get the first one in, eh,’’ he told her with a wry smile.
‘‘It was supposed to be my safety throw . . . it was what I needed to relax,’’ she says.
‘‘I’ve been trying so hard because I knew I had it in me. Dad was like me, a bit of a stunned mullet, and he was like, ‘you’ve just thrown a lifetime best, just go out and do what you were doing, and don’t over-complicate it’.’’
Of course the 24-year-old Bruce was magnanimous in defeat.
Ratcliffe: ‘‘It took an Olympic qualifier to get second on the podium at nationals – that’s a bloody good day for New Zealand athletics. She was super supportive, came and gave me a big hug and said,
‘congratulations, and I will see you in Tokyo’.’’
The achievement all came from such unpromising foundations too. Ratcliffe, like so many
of her peers, felt the pinch of the Covid-enforced postponement of the national championships. ‘‘A lot of us were running on fumes,’’ she says. ‘‘There was a lot of adrenalin and nervous energy around. The only thing going through my head was ‘relax, calm down’.’’
Now the mindset has flipped a little.
‘‘It feels like I’m finally realising my potential. I missed out on Rio by 25cm. Since then they’ve extended the qualification mark by 1.50m and I’ve just put a metre on top of that. It feels like everything is coming to fruition.’’
That’s why she bristles when you ask if a top-10 finish in Tokyo might now be her aim.
‘‘I’m after a medal, mate. In hammer anything is possible. You saw me foul out at the Potts. People do that at the Olympics and world champs frequently, and given the Covid disruptions, we’ve had the most uninterrupted training of everyone.
‘‘It would be remiss of us to not to have those big goals.’’
Four training blocks have been mapped out. A series of meets in Australia in June-July are options. But not if managed isolation is a requirement.
She feels loath to branch too far from her Hamilton training bubble where she has all she needs on her doorstep. ‘‘It’s business as usual. We know the training is working. It’s almost like the hard part is done, and I can go out and enjoy myself now.’’
Hammer time has never been so much fun.
‘‘He is absolutely chuffed. It’s his achievement as much as mine.’’ Julia Ratcliffe pays tribute to her coach and father Dave