Leighton Levy, Freelance Writer
Kaliese Spencer ... will run 400m at this weekend's National Senior Championships. - file
Kaliese Spencer just may be the most confident athlete hoping to make the national team to the Olympics in August.
The 20-year-old Spencer, the 2006 World Junior 400-metre hurdles champion, is not running the hurdles this year but believes if she did, she would be running world leading times. She also believes she is in good enough shape to dip below 50 seconds in the 400 metres and perhaps to take home a medal from the Olympic Games in Beijing this summer.
But she is not getting ahead of herself.
Top three?
"My training has been going well. I have been putting in my gym work, training hard, doing my speed work and all that so I am well prepared for the trials where I am hoping to make the top three and I will take it from there," she says.
That doesn't sound much like the athlete whose coach Stephen Francis called her out earlier this season describing her as lazy and lacking in motivation. She laughs at the characterisation but explains that she did not lack motivation but she is sometimes very laid back.
It seems though that she has set out to prove him wrong. "I am much stronger, training harder, more determined, more aggressive," she reveals.
Spencer has not raced much this season. She has had all of two 400-metre races - a 51.48 seconds performance for a fifth place finish in Qatar in February and a personal best 50.55 for a win in California in April. The latter was at the time the second fastest time in the world this year, behind the American Sanya Richards who had run 50.47 by then.
Time to claim a spot
Still, she feels that she has done enough to be ready to earn a spot on the national team.
"I have been training hard, training with the best so I am not worried at all. I am just going out there to do what I have to do," she says.
What she has to do is run very fast if she is even to consider getting a medal in Beijing. In addition to overcoming her countrywomen Shericka Williams and Novlene Williams-Mills, who won the bronze at last year's World Championships in Osaka, Japan, she also faces the daunting prospect of coming up against the heavily favoured American Sanya Richards and perhaps Allyson Felix both of whom have run under 50 seconds. She feels that if she accomplishes her goals she will be right there with them.
"My aim is to run 49.0 ... 49.4s , somewhere there," she says.
In addition to her physical training, Spencer reveals that a lot of focus has been put on mental preparation this year. She has been practising visualising what has to do in each race and then going out and getting it done. The practice, she anticipates, will serve her well during the big races she intends to be running in less than two months.
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