By PETER DOUGLAS
AN ankle injury on the eve of Olympic selection has failed to curtail emerging Upwey star, Melissa Duncan.
Despite not running the 1500m Olympic Trial in Sydney, selectors gave Duncan, 26, the nod to represent her country at the Rio Olympics later this year.
The selectors’ faith was as much about common sense as it was about the series of stellar results achieved over the past year.
Simply, she is the fastest female over 1500m in Australia.
Duncan said the injury did give her a fright, but was confident her ambitions were still on track.
“I hurt my ankle before the final and couldn’t run, the athletics Australia doctor said not to risk it, so I pulled out,” she said.
“I believed I’d produced enough strong showings to earn a place.
“I was a little worried, but the other girls needed to lift if they were going to catch me.”
Duncan was one of 28 new athletes who were announced as part of the Olympics squad, after the finish of the four-day Australian Championships in Sydney.
After recently moving back from Canberra, where she trained at the Australian Institute of Sport, Duncan is presently based at her Upwey home before she heads off overseas for several events.
She said confirmation of her place on the Olympics team would help her preparations.
“I’m happy I’ve been named in the team early; it takes the pressure off and I can prepare for Rio,” she said.
“In a few weeks I head to Shanghai, then Europe and the US.
“At the moment, I’m home and in a comfortable environment and making the most of that before a heavy schedule.
“I often spend half a year overseas, so I really take it in when I come home.”
Duncan’s journey to Olympic selection was far from a traditional path.
In fact, it was once so far-fetched she would never have dreamed it could come true.
“I’ve never been someone who has ever thought, ‘I’m going to do that’,” she said.
“I never thought I was capable of achieving this, of being an Olympian.”
While being a little modest, Duncan did have an interesting path to Rio.
She was a talented junior who competed at the World Youth Championships at just age 17.
However, she took a break from the sport after suffering from a frustrating foot injury.
But it didn’t take long for the running bug to bite again.
“I initially only got back into it as a social thing,” she said.
“Eventually, I looked at the qualifying time for the 2014 Commonwealth Games at Glasgow.
“I thought, ‘if I work hard, I could get that’.”
That’s exactly what Duncan achieved and more, eventually clocking a personal best of 4:05s in one of the heats and placing 10th overall.
“It’s just been a series of stepping stones along the way,” she said.
Duncan, a former Knox Athletics Club member, also paid tribute to some of her early mentors, who she said “made running fun”.
