More than 10 hurdles to jump: By Len Johnson

In reflecting on her only loss is a hurdles race for 2011, a fall in the Brussels Diamond League race, Sally Pearson commented: “I chose the event with 10 barriers that you have to get over or you don’t finish the race.”

Both women made news either side of the start of the London 2012 Olympic year. Pearson, such a magnificent winner of the 100 metres hurdles at the world championships in Daegu, injured her quadriceps running the Gippsland Gift just before Christmas.

Pittman has known her share of injury, too, most notably when running the Athens 2004 Olympic final just three weeks after a knee arthroscopy. This time, however, she made news in the first few days of Olympic year by announcing a split with her coach, Phil King.

A hurdles race may usually be about getting over 10 barriers, as Pearson reflected after her Diamond League loss, but sometimes it’s about more than that. Both Pearson and Pittman have an 11th barrier between them and their Olympic ambitions.

Outwardly, Pearson’s eleventh hurdle is the least significant of the two. If you’re going to sustain an injury during your Olympic preparation, best that it be a minor one, and before the Olympic year has even started at that. There seems no reason to believe she will not be quickly over it.

Injuries can come any time, any place, of course, but one interesting thing about the Pearson one is that it is, by my count, the third time one of Australia’s elite athletes has come to some sort of grief running a handicap sprint race.

Both Steve Hooker and Mitchell Watt suffered groin injuries in the 2010 Stawell Gift, and now Pearson is added to the list.

We hear a lot about the advantages of running handicap events – chiefly, that chasing others teaches you to race all the way to, and through, the line. There is undoubted merit in that argument. Equally, though, you have to ask whether straining at the end of an unfamiliar sprint distance on an unfamiliar racing surface might not be conducive to injury.

As for Pittman, her split with King comes just a month or so after she had returned to regular racing. Having run 55.75 in defeating Lauren Boden in the national tour final in Perth earlier this year, she was again hit by injury and this was the low-key start of another campaign.

In a statement released through Athletics Australia Pittman expressed her gratitude to King and said: “. . . it is time for me to take ownership and more control of my program.”

Ironically, King has expressed the same sentiment/wish many times during their long association. Now we will see how, and indeed whether, Jana can make self-ownership work. One thing for sure, it would be foolish to dismiss her chances. Two world championships and two individual Commonwealth Games gold medals underlines the point that she has the talent and determination to find a way.

Otherwise, the start of the Olympic year has been largely dominated by the summing up of the world championships year. When Pearson and Usain Bolt were named the IAAF/IAF athletes of the year recently, I pointed out that the IAAF-based award and the more rigorous Track & Field News assessments overwhelmingly came up with the same outcomes.

Not this time: T&FN went with David Rudisha for a repeat win as male athlete of the year, with 5000/10,000 metres world champion and world cross-country champion Vivian Cheruiyot as women’s athlete of the year. It was the first time a Kenyan woman has been voted AOY.

Pearson was runner-up in the T&FN women’s vote, but her 12.28 performance in taking the gold medal in Daegu was voted performance of the year. Yohan Blake’s 19.26 near-approach to Bolt’s 200 world record in Brussels was voted men’s performance of the year.

Pearson’s No.2 finish equals Cathy Freeman in 2000 as the best result ever by an Australian woman in the athlete of the year. Track & Field News only began voting a female AOY in the late-1970s, so Marjorie Jackson, Shirley Strickland and Betty Cuthbert were among the outstanding Australians to have never had a chance to win.

The magazine had put only its event number-ones on its website at the time of writing, with both Pearson and Daegu long jump silver medallist Mitch Watt ranked top in their events. If form and other polls are any guide, you can expect walkers Jared Tallent and Luke Adams to get a top-10 ranking in the 50km, and throwers Benn Harradine (discus), Jarrod Bannister and Kim Mickle (both javelin) to be top-10 in their respective events. Maybe Dani Samuels (discus) will join them.

Then, you can finally stick a fork in 2011 – it will be done! Roll on 2012 and London.