AFP/Sydney

Australian Olympic champion Sally Pearson fears next year's Rio Games will be tainted by drugs, as she lashed out at doping cheats in the crisis-hit sport yesterday. The champion hurdler, who will miss this month’s World Championships in Beijing after wrist surgery, said she had no doubt some athletes in Rio will be doped.
“Unfortunately it’s going to be there,” she told reporters at an event in Sydney marking the one-year countdown to the 2016 Olympics. “I don’t know how confident I am about how clean it’s going to be in Rio. But as long as we can do everything we can to make it the cleanest Olympics we can, then that is a really good start.”  
Pearson, who injured her left wrist when she tumbled during a Diamond League race in Rome in June, said she was disappointed at the latest scandal.
“I don’t understand how you can go out into a sporting arena and compete, knowing what you have taken, and be proud of that,” she said.
“But at the end of the day, it’s good that they are being caught as much as it’s disappointing that it still exists.”  
Pearson has begun the road back to competition after her horror fall and is convinced she will be a contender once again when the Rio de Janeiro Games come around in a year’s time.
“I’m doing alright, it’s a bit of a slow process, I started my rehab training yesterday and I’m hoping to return to proper training in September,” the 28-year-old said.
“It’s going slowly, there’s not a lot of movement in (the wrist) at the moment but at least it’s not my ankle, that would be disastrous. I’m okay.”
After such a frightening ordeal, Pearson could be forgiven for some trepidation about once again launching herself at full sprint at a line of ten hurdles, 83.8 centimetres high.
“I’m the sort of person that doesn’t dwell on things and doesn’t keep those negative thoughts in my head,” she said. “I think when it’s time to get back over the hurdles, I think I’ll be okay with it.
“At this point in time I don’t have any fear about it, who knows how I’ll feel when actually have to face them? I don’t know, there’s always a risk of it happening again but I’ll just have to make sure it doesn’t.”
Before facing hurdles both physical and psychological, however, Pearson must get her body back into shape after the longest lay-off of her career.
Only then will she start the process of plotting her course towards her Olympic title defence in Brazil.
“At this point it’s all about getting fit again, it’s going to be a long three months of endurance training,” she said. “It’s only a year to go. And people think that’s plenty of time but what you have to do in that time to be at your absolute best at race time is huge.
“This will be my third Olympics, and I  know what to do this time around, I’m not nervous, I know how to handle the pressure. I’m not going out there to just make up the numbers. I’m going out there to be serious.”