Athletics: Faumuina cuts links with Mills

By TERRY MADDAFORD

Former world discus champion Beatrice Faumuina has hobbled out on her coach Les Mills, ending a four-year relationship which saw the 26-year-old go from the giddy heights of gold at the 1997 world championships to the despair of the Sydney Olympics.

While Faumuina still contemplates a return to the international arena with August's world championships in Canada a short term goal and the 2002 Commonwealth Games and 2004 Olympics in the future, she is going nowhere at the moment.

Recovering from an early-December operation on her right Achilles tendon, Faumuina has her leg in a cast and is unable to drive. It will be mid-late January before the cast comes off.

"I'm trying to do some weights and a bit of cardio work," said Faumuina yesterday. "But it is not easy. It will be late February-early March at the earliest before I can start throwing again.

"The healing process is quite promising and while my heart and my mind remain willing, I want to get back to throwing."

The injury may have been a combination of an old netball injury and the more recent stresses and strains of her successful competitive career.

"Until my physio had a really close look at it, I didn't realise the Achilles had gone altogether."

But Faumuina does not know who will be wearing her coach's cap when she picks up a discus again, although she confirms it won't be Les Mills.

Faumuina said she had not spoken to Mills since a brief meeting last month when she told him she felt it was time to end their training partnership.

Mills described the meeting as "quite happy" and wished her well.

"We have happily gone our own ways," said Mills. "It was Beatrice and her mum's call. I want to get on with coaching a small group of allrounders. I'm very interested in doing some work with heptathletes and decathletes.

"As far as Beatrice is concerned, I said to her that if she was not entirely happy it was up to her to make a decision. I spent four years with her. There have been some successes and some failures."

Mills, a former Auckland mayor and the chef de mission at the 1998 Commonwealth Games and 2000 Sydney Olympics, said those appointments had "rounded out his Olympic aspirations" and that he was happy as a hobby coach.

Faumuina, who turned to Mills after the death of her first coach Miriam Stanley, graduated with a Diploma of Business Studies this year and plans a degree course in marketing next year.