After being dropped by national athletics selectors in 2017, Alyssa Conley was so despondent she decided to hang up her spikes, and it seemed one of the country’s fastest women were lost to South African sport.
Eager to prove you can’t keep a good woman down, however, Conley has since traded her spikes for a pair of rugby boots, and she aims to make history at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Though she remained reluctant to turn her back on the track permanently, the 28-year-old former sprinter revealed this week that she was pleased with the decision she had made.
“You never know what the future holds, so I don’t want to say it’ll never happen, but I’m focussing everything on rugby at the moment,” she said.
Born in Johannesburg, Conley took up the sport of sprinting as a child, and as a teenager, she reached the 100m and 200m finals at the 2007 World Youth Championships in Ostrava.
One of the country’s most promising speedsters, she struggled with injuries in the early stages of her senior career, and after winning the SA 100m title in 2013 she vanished from competitive athletics.
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