Taking Flight E-mail
Glenda Korporaal  
The Australian
April 10, 20-10

Women's discus is no longer dominated by beefy Eastern Europeans. As Glenda Korporaal writes, Australia's 21-year-old bombshell Dani Samuels is the one to watch

LATE AFTERNOON SHADOWS CREEP ACROSS a park in Sydney's western suburbs. A statuesque blonde steps into the discus ring and coils herself in readiness for her 20th throw of the day. Deep in concentration, she hold the discus to her cheek for a second and then twirls around, gathering furious momentum as she propels the fibreglass and metal discus with such force that it lands on the grass with a dull thud about 60 metres away. "That felt better," she declares to her coach, who is watching her intently from behind the cage.
"That's what you want," replies Denis Knowles, a white-haired, Lancashire-born, 59-year-old former factory manager. "Power without effort."
Dani Samuels nods. Sweating profusely, she strides across the grass, picks up the discus, returns to the cage and tries it again. And again.
In a sport where the difference between a gold medal and nothing can come down to centimetres, Knowles isn't measuring Samuels' throws today - this is just a training session, after all - but several of these practice efforts seem but a palm's breadth from the astonishing 65.44m the 21-year-old achieved at the World Athletics Championships in Berlin last August. At that event she became the youngest woman ever to win a world discus title, beating the 2008 Olympic gold and silver medallists and surpassing her own personal best by 2.5m.
Honing this level of sporting prowess takes constant, grinding work for athlete and coach alike, and it's here, at this oval in Greystanes - with semi-trailers roaring past on nearby Gipps Road - that Samuels has been training three or four times a week. It's a park she has known since the age of eight, when she was training for Little Athletics. It's one of the few parks in Sydney designed for discus, hammer and shot put, and it's where she tops off a gruelling training regime that includes weights, gymnastics and boxing. It's also where she nurtures her dream not only to win gold at the London Olympics in 2012, but also to compete in as many as five Olympics. Samuels' hero is German Franka Dietzsch, three-time world champion, who was still competing last year at the age of 41.
Time is on Samuels' side: this is an event in which athletes typically do not peak until their late 20s. But for the moment she has next week's national athletics championships in Perth to focus on, which will determine Australia's track and field squad for the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi in October. "If Dani had been in China she would be a national hero," enthuses Denis Knowles. "They would have bought her a car by now."
Knowles is the guiding force of what he calls "Team Samuels", a small but influential group of mentors and financial supporters, including Knowles' son Hayden, who is her manager (as well as being the strength and conditioning coach for the Parramatta Eels rugby league team); her family (mother, Tracy, a younger brother and two sisters); boyfriend, shot putter Joe Stevens; boxer Danny Green; millionaire Nathan Tinkler; horse-racing enthusiasts Rosemary and Wilf Mula; and Eels trainer Craig Catterick and veteran winger Luke Burt. Denis Knowles has been with her since she was 10, playing a growing role that intensified after the tragic death of her father when she was 15. Mark Samuels was on a bike ride to Mittagong in NSW in 2004, training for his second ironman, when he and a mate were hit by a semi-trailer. The friend survived. Mark Samuels didn't. He was 46.

Clean new image
SITTING IN A CAFE IN SYDNEY'S PARRAMATTA, Samuels is friendly and relaxed as she tucks into a lunch of octopus salad. She may be 182cm tall, exuding fitness and strength, but missing are the boulder shoulders and beefy thighs we normally associate with female throwers - particularly those of decades past when throwing events were dominated by drug-fuelled athletes from the Eastern bloc. If Samuels had been born a few decades earlier, she probably wouldn't be at world-class level in the discus. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the worldwide crackdown on doping in sport has helped put Australian athletes on a more competitive footing. (The world record in the discus was set by East German Gabriele Reinsch in 1988 - an astonishing 76.8m - and no one is boasting that they can break it any time soon.)
Still, Samuels knows only too well the sport is not completely drug-free. "You feel that the drugs being created are always a step ahead of the people trying to detect them," she says. "There's nothing I can do about it. I can't control what someone else puts in their body or how they compete. Every now and then you get someone who looks quite a bit different to the last time you saw them. There's no point whingeing. You just have to hope they get caught." Like all the world's top athletes, Samuels knows she could be subjected to a drug test at any time.
Although the odd person comes up to her in the street and asks, "Aren't you that discus girl?", Samuels is hardly a household name in Australia. Especially in her home town of Sydney, with its four codes of football, and her own area, where the Parramatta Eels rugby league team will inevitably attract truckloads more publicity. She knows that a higher profile would inevitably draw more sponsors (at present she has three, including Parramatta Eels' major sponsor Pirtek, which has enabled her to train full-time and not work). In the meantime, she's active in charity work, having become an ambassador for the GO Research Fund into ovarian cancer, a role she shares with horse trainer Gai Waterhouse. It's clear she considers herself blessed. "What I have here is pretty special," she says.
Samuels has rebuffed several offers from American universities and is studying arts at the University of Western Sydney, where she plans to do a masters in primary teaching. She still lives at home with her mother and siblings, all of whom have played competitive basketball. Her older sister, Jamie, played for the Sydney Flames for five years; younger sister Casey has been selected for the NSW state basketball squad. Dani's mother, Tracy, describes her middle daughter as a "homebody" who doesn't drink or go out late-night partying. "She loved throwing events - shot and discus - from an early age."
At 15, Samuels was selected for her first international event, the 2003 World Youth Championships (for athletes under 18) in Canada for the shot put. One of the youngest athletes there, Samuels suffered the ignominy of coming "dead last" in the shot put but the exercise gave her a taste of top-level international competition. "I said to Denis, 'I'm going to come back in two years' time and win the discus,'?" she recalls.
When our conversation shifts to her father, she quietly answers the questions. She rejects superficial interpretations about the effect his death has had on her career. "There are a lot of other things that have happened in my life that have combined to get me where I am today," she says. Her father's death was traumatic for the close-knit Samuels family: "Your world gets thrown upside down." Her mum had to go back to work (as a basketball coach at Westfields Sports High) to support the family. "My mother never cried in front of us," she recalls. "She had to get on with her life."
Samuels estimates it took about a year to come to terms with her father's death, and says it helped her see the value of seizing the moment. "It made me realise that life is short," she says. "You have to do what you love. You have to put everything into it." She is fiercely protective of her father's memory. "My dad was so dedicated," she reflects. "You have to be to do triathlon. That's where I get a bit of the fire in the belly from. Having my athletics helped me through it as well. Me and Denis became very, very close. He helped me through that year as well."
Denis Knowles has accompanied Samuels to most of her major events and has brought in specialists to help her with everything from boxing and gymnastics to nutrition and physiotherapy. "Denis is one of my best friends," she says. "A lot of people find it funny because he's turning 60 this year. But he has made so many sacrifices for this dream of mine."
In early 2005, a year after her father's death, Samuels sat down with Denis and Hayden Knowles to discuss her future. "They asked me what I was looking to achieve in athletics," she recalls. "I said I want to win an Olympic gold medal. So we pretty much sat down and planned every single year until 2012 because we saw London as pretty much the most realistic Olympics I could win."
In her second World Youth Championships, in Morocco later that year, she came third in the shot put and fulfilled her vow of coming first in the discus. At the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne she won a bronze medal.
Denis Knowles had always been a fan of US champion discus thrower Mac Wilkins, who won gold in the 1976 Olympics in Montreal and silver in the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, and the Knowles raised the funds to bring the American to Australia in 2007. The visit led to a change in Samuels' throwing technique.
"I realised I was pretty much throwing with my upper body," she recalls. "I wasn't incorporating my legs at all." Wilkins encouraged her to begin the throw using the power of her legs rather than just swinging her torso around. "I had to teach my upper body to be passive. It has to be locked in and controlled. Not leading, not pulling. I had to learn to incorporate my legs to get more power." Samuels gets up in the coffee shop to demonstrate: "It's strong legs, strong core. Hips go first, and then it's the arm."
The following year, at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, she was the youngest member of the Australian track and field team. She made the final but only came ninth - missing out on the all-important top eight by 15cm with a throw of 57.14m. Her mother and her friends - who were all sporting their "Dani" T-shirts - were proud, but Samuels came back bitterly disappointed, worried that she had let down her growing band of supporters.
But she soon regained her motivation and went on to win the World Championships last year in Berlin. Meanwhile, she is still trying to refine the technique that Wilkins demonstrated: "Mac's visit was a very valuable experience. We are still trying to change things based on some of his suggestions."
So polished is her throwing style now that when two German women discus throwers and their coach travelled to Australia to compete and train with Samuels last month, Knowles didn't want her to watch them in action. He was concerned it might lead his charge to experiment with her technique, which he has helped painstakingly refine over the years.

Training with the boys
SAMUELS IS AT EASE IN THE TESTOSTERONE-charged atmosphere of the Parramatta Eels rugby league gym, where she trains beside some of Australia's finest footballers and boxers. Some of them, including star pinup boy Jarryd Hayne, she remembers from school at Westfields Sports High in Fairfield West. "She turns some heads when she walks into the place," says Hayden Knowles, who has arranged for her to train at the gym. "Some of the boys are amazed at some of the athletic stuff she can do. They have a lot of respect for each other. They are elite athletes. To get to that level takes a lot of hard work and sacrifices. It's something they can all acknowledge."
Samuels clearly relishes the team atmosphere at the gym, something she has missed since giving up competitive basketball to concentrate on the discus more than three years ago. "Discus is an individual sport," she says. "It can get lonely so you need some different personalities there [at training]. It is interesting watching the footballers train and how they mesh with each other. It reminds me of when I used to play basketball."
The Parramatta community was right behind Samuels on that humid night in Berlin last year. She fouled her first throw and then followed up with a weak second one of only 59.05m, leaving her outside the top eight who make the final three throws. "Some people were in panic stations with the thought that I might not make it to the top eight," she recalls. "For about 10 seconds I thought, 'This is not going how it is supposed to go.' But I had to turn it into a positive and say, 'It is only 60m to get into the final.' I knew I could do much better - and I was going to."
Her third throw was 62.71m, which moved her into third place behind Romania's Nicoleta Grasu (65.20m) and Cuba's Yarelis Barrios (64.44m). Other athletes might have tensed up at this point - some of her rivals did, in fact - but Samuels felt comfortable. "Having made the top eight in third position, I just relaxed and enjoyed being out there," she says.
Samuels then followed this up with a personal best - 64.76m - in the fourth round, moving into second place. It was a throw that would have won her gold at the Beijing Olympics the year before (won by Stephanie Brown Trafton of the US with 64.74m). The fifth round was the clincher. Samuels knew she was in with a chance. Relaxed, she threw another personal best - 65.44m - to take the lead.
Samuels nervously watched her rivals. Grasu and Barrios had two more throws each. Grasu failed to improve and Barrios passed her, coming within 13cm of Samuels' best effort - but it was not enough. Samuels had become Australia's first world champion in the discus and the youngest winner of a world championship or an Olympic Games in her event. She joined the ranks of a small, select group of top athletes who have won a World Youth title (for under 18s), World Junior title (for under 20s) and a World Championship in the one event. Others include Australian 400m hurdler Jana Rawlinson and Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt.
"I don't think it can get any better than this," declared Knowles as Samuels hugged him on the sidelines while the Australians in the crowd celebrated noisily. "Yes it will," she replied.

All eyes on London
IN FEBRUARY, SAMUELS FOUND HERSELF A MINI-star at an Australian athletics event for the first time when she threw another personal best of 65.84m at the Sydney Track Classic at Sydney Olympic Park. "I had kids screaming at me to give them my autograph and I had photos with everyone," she says. "It was pretty insane."
After the national athletics championships next week, the IAAF's Diamond League will give her more world-class competition beginning with a meeting in Doha on May 14. She will enter the Commonwealth Games as favourite. But she says she still faces strong competition from South African Elizna Naude and two Indian throwers, Seema Antil and Krishna Poonia, who will be competing on home soil.
For many athletes, including Samuels' training partner, 20-year-old Christie Chamberlain, who ranks fourth in Australia in the discus, next week's national championships will determine whether they will be part of the Australian squad for the Commonwealth Games. Samuels, who has won the nationals in the discus every year since 2007, has already thrown the distance needed to qualify. Her goal? To win every competition she enters.
Denis and Hayden Knowles believe Samuels is capable of throwing 70m - without performance-enhancing drugs. "With careful planning she will be physically stronger by London and, hopefully, a bit better technically," insists Denis. "I believe that Dani will be throwing 67m by then. She is certainly a chance."
With such a strict training regime, does she ever feel like giving it away, enjoying a more carefree youth? "When I was 13, I wanted to quit the discus and just do javelin and shot put," she recalls. "I said, 'I don't want to do it anymore'. But my mum and my coach talked to me. I just needed a break. I came back loving it.
"You have the tough days when it is winter and it's raining and freezing cold. You are out there trying to throw something metal with your fingers. And you can't even feel your fingers. You have to remember what you are working for - you have to be mentally tough."
While some athletes buckle under pressure during a top-level meet, Samuels seems to thrive on it, often throwing personal bests. From the start, says Denis Knowles, he encouraged her to "seek out the best and take them on. And she did. I have seen a change in her over time. She has grown in confidence. She has become mentally tough because of her exposure to the world championships and the Olympic Games at a young age. She is not intimidated by anyone."
That calmness could well become her trademark. "It's called being bulletproof - not letting anything affect you," she explains. "It could be the weather, it could be that you had an argument on the way to training, you can't let it play on your mind."
She pauses for a moment and reflects: "I've got all these goals and I want to do everything possible to get there."