Sam Harding | Going the Distance

Nine years after gaining selection to his first Australian Paralympic Team, middle distance runner Sam Harding is ready to step onto the track at Tokyo Olympic Stadium and make his long awaited Paralympic debut.

After a quick rise as an 800m athlete, a then 20-year-old Harding was gearing up for the London 2012 Paralympic Games when fate had other plans as he contracted Glandular Fever just days before entering the Paralympic Village.

“Everything was going pretty much to plan. I had travelled to Cardiff for staging camp, and stayed there after most our team left because we weren’t competing until the last few days of the Games,” Harding said.

“But then one day I got really tired. I was already training less, so things didn’t feel quite right. One afternoon, we came back from getting a coffee and I needed to sleep the rest of the day. Then I started to get the sweats at night.”

Things went from bad to worse for the vision-impaired athlete as he arrived in London only to receive his official diagnosis just six days before he was due to compete.

“I would walk to the dining hall for meals, and then would need to sleep the whole day. There were days I was sleeping 18-20 hours a day.”

Still determined to achieve his goal of becoming a Paralympian, Harding and his coach Iryna Dvoskina revised their plan, with the aim of making it to the start line.  

“A few days passed and then she gave me all the information about Glandular Fever and what could and couldn’t happen. There was a risk if I pushed myself to compete so I decided to pull out.”

With a mountain of recovery ahead of him, Harding said the only silver lining was that his illness clouded any devastation of not competing.

“I was so exhausted, I wasn’t even upset that I wasn’t able to compete. I just wanted to get better. Rio was in four years, I thought. Time goes quickly so I’d just get better and train for Rio.”

While the road to recovery began the day he opted to withdraw from competition, it took nine months for Harding to regain his fitness. Dvoskina devised a regime that began with what seemed like the simplest of tasks; walking 100m. He progressed to a jog over the same distance and worked his way to one lap of the track and then two.

In 2013, Harding hit his next hurdle. The 800m T12 was removed from the Paralympic program for Rio, and so he made the decision to step down to the 400m and focus on strength and speed. He trained with the likes of Steve Solomon and Will McNamara but, “I never seemed to get better than 52.5.”

It wasn't until late 2015, when Harding was introduced to his now-coach Philo Saunders, that all began to click into place. 

“When Iryna and Philo were talking, we did a time trial in Canberra. I ran 4:33 for a 1500 and it was one of the toughest runs I’ve ever done. I knew there was heaps of work that I could do at that point though,” he said.

“At the time I was running only 15km a week compared to Roegs (Michael Roeger), who was running 140km a week. I didn’t think it was possible to get there at first, but with the fundamentals work I had done with Iryna, and Philo’s specialty in distance, I saw a slow progression.”

Under the tutelage of Saunders, Harding has soared to success. A pivotal moment for him was at a training camp in Flagstaff, USA in 2017, where his training partners finished their preparations for the IPC World Championships in London.

“Philo would make us do 16 x 400 in Flagstaff. I was always really scared of them but I first started with six, then it was 10 and then it was 12. By the time I got to 16, it became easy and I realised how far I’d come.

“In 2019, I went back to Flagstaff with the squad before they competed at the World Championships in Dubai, and when I came home to Perth, I ran a PB.”

Slashing his 1500m personal best from 3:59 to 3:53 was a significant milestone for Harding, but what made it more momentous was the fact that he ran the Tokyo qualifying time on the same evening his training partners Roeger and Jaryd Clifford competed at the 2019 IPC World Championships in Dubai.

“That was pretty awesome. Roegs was one of the first people I met in Canberra at the AIS. He introduced me to everyone, and it was a really unique environment for me back then. I met Cliffy in classification in 2013 and he’s just been progressing year after year, and it’s been awesome training with him. And Philo makes a good training environment. I honestly haven’t laughed as much as I have than in training with those guys,” he said.

“It was a huge process to run my PB that night. To run in Perth when everyone was running in Dubai was awesome. The only time I had competed in Perth was Nationals in 2010, so to go back to Perth and be in really good shape, and to show family and friends what I’d been up to for 10 years and to run a really PB was really special.”

While Sam Harding is now counting down the days until he toes the line at Tokyo Olympic Stadium, he’s proud that his perseverance has paid off.

“There wasn’t ever a time that I didn’t think I could get here. I knew my best would be a lot better that kept me going each year. I knew I just had to stick at it,” he said.

“To be selected, it’s a relief but I’ve been closer before. The goal is to race. There are heats and finals. To make the final alongside Cliffy would be awesome. And to run a PB would be another goal. If my foot is on the line, it might sound crazy, but I believe anything can happen.”

Watch Harding compete in the 1500m T12/13 heats on August 28 on the Seven Network and 7Plus.

By Sascha Ryner, Athletics Australia
Posted: 24/8/2021