7news: The world’s best javelin thrower finds her sport ‘very humbling’. Here’s why.

An excerpt from a great interview on 7news.com.au with Kelsey on her pre-Commonwealth Games performance mindset

Australia’s Kelsey-Lee Barber has just become the world champion - again - but is not resting on her laurels.

In a sport of centimetres – literally, centimetres – complacency is poison.

Aussie golden girl Kelsey-Lee Barber has just won her second world javelin title at the World Athletics Championships in Oregon, but admits even she gets humbled by the sport.

Barber wrote herself into the Australian sporting history books with her win last week, joining the great Cathy Freeman as the only Australians to successfully defend a world athletics title.

If she hadn’t already, Barber stamped herself as a big-event performer when she produced a monster third throw of 66.91m, the second biggest of her career, to take out gold.

No other athlete even got close.

She has now won medals at each of her past three major championships after world gold in 2019 and 2022, and bronze at the Tokyo Olympics.

Her career is growing to become one of the most decorated in Australian athletics history.

Even still, the high-flying sport of javelin has a way of anchoring her feet on the ground.

“Javelin is very humbling and when your timing is off, it certainly shows,” she told 7NEWS.com.au.

“I think it’s one of those events that you can have massive differences in performances by things not quite coming together.

“There’s a level of acceptance in knowing that not everything might come together on the day for you.

“But it’s being able to work with the elements that you’ve got and get the most out of them and, honestly, sometimes it’s about just gritting it out and pulling something together.

“Even if you don’t feel amazing, you can still you can still put something out there. I think that’s what you learn over time with the events and experiences.

“But when you’re at this level and you’re at the major championships, sometimes you just find a way and, as I said, you just put together everything that you’ve got and you’ve got to go for it.

“You’ve got to accept where you are and find something on the day.”

Find something on the day, she did…

Read the full article by Harrison Reid on 7news.com.au

Cover image credit: Getty