Goldie Sayers determined to take care of business

If anything highlights the thin line between success and failure then it is the fact that Goldie Sayers was 38 centimetres short of a seat in business class. The javelin thrower boarded the plane home from Beijing and turned right while her team-mates mixed medals and metal cutlery to the left.
It was a small thing that niggled away at a woman who was among the unluckiest on the Great Britain Olympic team. Her best throw of 65.75 metres would have given her a medal in the 2004 Games in Athens and at the World Championships in 2007. She also had to contend with having to rush her last throw after confusion over the countdown clock and watching as Mariya Abakumova, of Russia, won silver.
“To be beaten by someone who came from nowhere and threw over 70 metres means you just have to smile,” Sayers said in the aftermath, prompting a smattering of “cheated” headlines. Given the sting that ensnared seven Russian athletes on the eve of the Games, any rapid improvement inevitably raises suspicion. However, Abakumova has never failed a drugs test and Sayers knows she cannot allow any doubts to fester.
Instead, she believes she can soon break the British record she set at the Olympics. “I’m making big strides,” she said. “I will go to the World Championships in Berlin in August with confidence and I certainly don’t want to be fourth again. It was a horrible feeling, but I also knew I’d done well and that throwing that far would have brought me two or three medals in recent times.”
Sayers is also getting better under the stewardship of her coach, Mark Roberson, and is now well versed in dealing with flying doctors. “I was training in Italy last week and the field doubled as a landing pad for helicopters,” she said. “That was quite an experience. I threw really well, although the propellers blew my marker, a Coke can, away.” Paramedics helped her to look for the can under the helicopter while they waited for a patient.
It was an unusual training session but Sayers, 26, is one of the more interesting athletes. She has a first-class degree in sport and exercise science, was an under-11 national table tennis champion and is the daughter of Pete Sayers, the late bluegrass singer.
The multitasker from Cambridge is also taking a diploma in marketing and so will have pre-championship exams to contend with this year. The javelin, however, remains her main focus and she explained its attraction.
“It is a very technical thing but basically I am like the bow for an arrow,” she said. “I get into a rhythm and can tell from my run-up if it’s going to be a good one. There are only 4.3 seconds so once you start down the runway there’s not a lot you can do to change. I focus on a spot in the sky and just love the buzz of seeing the javelin fly.
“There’s a lot more to it than people think. It’s quite spectacular if you are down at ground level and far more complicated than running, which is basically putting one foot in front of the other. If my foot is an inch out, it can cost me three or four metres.”
Despite a modest start to the season at the Loughborough International on Sunday, where she threw 59.77 metres, she thinks she can throw 68 metres this summer, which should give her a medal in Berlin and form a timeline back to stars such as Steve Backley, Fatima Whitbread and Tessa Sanderson.
Barbora Spotakova, of the Czech Republic, the Olympic champion and world record-holder, appears to be out of sight on the back of a training regime that involves drinking a beer a day, but Sayers can threaten the rest. And despite the frustration of Beijing, she says that “every second of blood, sweat, tears, moods, heartbreak and emotion” was worth it.
Though disappointed, she said she felt proud as she sat by the toilets at the back of the plane from Beijing, but would have loved to have been part of the knees-up. However, she believes she will be peaking perfectly to claim a better seat at the 2012 party.
Source:The times