IN her last race before the London Games, Sally Pearson suffered her first loss for two years.
The pressure on the Gold Coast hurdler was immense - she was the silver medallist from Beijing and reigning world champion. 
In the days after that loss, she received an email from Australia's greatest Olympian Cathy Freeman. Freeman knew a little bit about handling pressure after her incredible performance at the Sydney Games.
Pearson's loss turned out to be a minor blip.
She was back at the top of her game inside the Olympic stadium, sending a clear message to her rivals with a dominant semi-final victory.
Despite rain falling on the start line for the final, Pearson was zoned in and delivered her trademark dynamite start to take control of the race and then hang on to take gold in an Olympic record time of 12.35sec.
She hadn't seen how close America's Dawn Harper got to her on the line. "I thought I had it in the bag," Pearson admitted later."I couldn't see Dawn at all anywhere in the race and it wasn't until after the finish line that I looked over and I thought 'whoa, that was really, really close. So let's just hope that I've got this'. It was a massive relief when my name came up."