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BEIJING - Discus thrower Beatrice Faumuina is approaching her fourth Olympics with a renewed spring in her step and fling in her arm.
Eleven years after she ambushed the throwing world with a win at the world championships, a change in coach and training routine looks to have rekindled Faumuina's enthusiasm for athletics.
Her throwing career has been patchy to say the least since her 1997 win in Athens - Olympics and world championships have come and gone, and Faumuina has never managed to repeat the focused concentration and form which saw her spin the discus out to a personal best 68.52m.
But going into Friday's qualifying rounds for the discus, the Aucklander is quietly confident she and new coach Ross Dallow are on track to make another Olympic final after finishing seventh at the Athens Games four years ago.
Not that she has any unrealistic expectations about exactly what that will entail.
"Actually making the final this time around's going to be a lot tougher than any other Olympics. I think the automatic qualifying standard is going to be around 63 metres - I'd be surprised if it's anything less," she said.
Faumuina said she had a new enthusiasm for athletics after coming under the wing of Dallow, following her split with long-term coach Debbie Strange. Former Auckland mayor and Commonwealth Games gold medallist Les Mills coached Faumuina when she first burst onto the world stage in 1997.
"The thing that's exciting for me is that now I have a lifting coach and a biomechanics coach - everything's covered. Whereas before, it was a different situation with one person trying to look after everything.
"It's a different situation to be in because when things don't go well, you don't have a back-up plan, you don't have other people you can seek advice from."
Faumuina said the fact that she'd had barely seventh months' training with Dallow made things even trickier, although a 60.71m effort at the New Zealand national championships in March gave an indication things were on the right track.
Since then, although training and adjustments to her throwing technique have been going well, Faumuina admits she is a little short on competition.
Three weeks in San Diego from mid-July has worked wonders for technical tweaking, but finding any sort of competition leading into the Olympics has proved more problematic.
"We set up a couple of competitions, but I was left with only myself and one other competitor. It's hard to set up a situation like the Olympics where you have 20-25 in your pool," she said.
Whatever the outcome of Friday's qualifying round, where Faumuina is battling 40 others for the 12 spots available in the final, she is already contemplating her fifth Olympics.
"I'm here at the Olympics, it's my fourth one and there's the potential of attending my fifth, especially with the team I've got now.
"I don't want to give up my chance of doing something better than I did 11 years ago."
- NZPA
