Athletics: Bea will be back - so watch out world

World discus champion Beatrice Faumuina has put months of mental and physical anguish behind her.

She is now counting the days to when she can get out and prove to herself and the sceptics that she has recovered from the back injury which gave her such a wretched time in the latter part of 1998.

"For the first time in a long while I feel I'm getting somewhere," said Faumuina. "In the last few weeks I have felt stronger by the day and feel I am now getting over the injury.

"I'm not going to rush back into competition but plan to be in Hamilton for the nationals from February 26-28 with the intention of defending my discus and shot put titles."

While she is not expecting to get close to her 68.52m discus best at Porritt Stadium, Faumuina said she would be really upset if she did not manage the 61m she needs to qualify for the World Track and Field Championships in Spain in August where she will defend the title she won two years ago in Athens.

Faumina struggled with the injury from August when her sore back "blew out" and left her in real pain as she undertook long air flights to Russia and later to South Africa for a World Cup meeting.

"The travel coupled with the terrible weather - we competed in rain and seven degrees in Russia and had another terrible day in South Africa - made life very, very difficult," she said. "By the time I left our pre-Games camp in Darwin I was struggling. It was no use trying to hide the injury - it was that bad - but thankfully at the Commonwealth Games I managed to get it right for one big throw.

"People were wondering why I wasn't throwing well and not feeling great, but there were genuine reasons that's for sure.

"Since I got back into it I have had to ease myself into training. It has been a slow build-up and I'm still way down on the weights I have lifted in the past.

It has been a testing time.

"At the same time it has been amazing there have been people saying `she might not go to the [Sydney] Olympics' or `she might be forced into early retirement' but I have been able to counter that with the number of people who have given me great support.

"When I got home from Kuala Lumpur I could virtually do nothing. I had a week or more of people prodding and poking as we tried to find out just what the problem was," said Faumuina. "I had a month of doing very little. I could not even cycle. I learned patience was very much the name of the game.

"By the beginning of December I got to the stage where I could do a [controlled] workout as my coach Les Mills put me on a changed programme. Give me two months and I'm confident I'll be right.

"It seems strange to be going into a nationals without a competition behind me. Usually I would have expected to have 15 competitions by now."

Faumuina said she had been faxing "everyone and anyone" in her search for competition. "My event is not part of the Grand Prix circuit this year so I hope to get to the United States in June to at least train but hopefully compete as well."

As ever, Faumuina remains coy on her target for the year but admits the 76.80m world record set in the drug-clouded days of the late '80s by Gabriele Reinch is "out of sight.

"If I or anyone throws over 70m this year questions will, no doubt, be asked."

Pictured: Beatrice Faumuina. PICTURE / JAMES GIBBINGS