LYNSEY Sharp has asked the hometown crowd at the Carrara Stadium in the Gold Coast to bring the noise next week – because she usually reserves her best performances for the biggest atmospheres. Sharp famously brought home a silver medal for Scotland in Glasgow 2014, after a build-up which saw her confined to a wheelchair with a leg infection and succumb to an illness on the eve of the competition. Nothing may ever live up to that, but after a fourth-place finish in a low key Queensland Track Classic event warm-up event in Brisbane which even she described as ‘garbage’, battling a raucous Australian crowd in a Commonwealth final might be the best thing for her.
“I raced a week ago which was garbage but that was usual me,” said Sharp. “I got excited with 300 to go and that was a long way out to kick for home. Then I hit the wind on the home straight. But I’d rather have done that there than in the heats.
“In athletics over the last few years we’ve had London 2012, Glasgow 2014, then the world champs in London last year,” added the 27-year-old. “It’s almost like that became normal. It’s awful to say it but the atmosphere in Rio was dead - I remember walking out to the Olympics final chatting to Melissa [Bishop, of Canada] and it felt like it wasn’t the Olympic final. I very much prefer big events and find it hard to get up for low key races.”
Sharp has almost forgotten how it feels to have a major athletics medal draped around her neck. A fortnight after her Glasgow ordeal, Sharp went onto add a European silver medal and then nothing since. With most medals over her distance sewn up by athletes with abnormally high testosterone counts such as South Africa’s Caster Semenya, Kenya’s Margaret Wambui and Francine Niyonsaba of Burundi – the first two of which will also be present in the Gold Coast this fortnight – no wonder if Sharp is keen to rekindle those memories. “I think another medal would be as satisfying as Glasgow because it’s been really hard over the last couple of years to get any sort of silverware,” she said. “There’s been a domination in the women’s 800. I’ve missed getting medals. To have Commonwealth and Europeans coming up again is great.”
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