Drawing strength and inspiration from her late grandmother, who was a Holocaust survivor, Australian walker Jemima Montag has dug deep to claim the 20km silver medal at the world championships in Budapest.
The 25-year-old followed eventual gold medallist Maria Perez when the Spaniard made the decisive break from the lead pack at the 15km mark on Sunday morning in historic Heroes Square.
Having already received one red card, Montag had no intention of risking disqualification by chasing down Perez.
She chose instead to lock in the silver, making her Australia’s first female walking medallist at a world titles since Kerry Saxby-Junna in 1999.
And Montag had her grandmother Judith there in spirit every step of the way in the form of a bracelet on her left arm which was previously part of her late relative’s necklace.
“I feel especially close to her, being in a country where a lot of Holocaust survivors came and were involved in,” she told reporters.
“She fled to Paris after the war (after surviving the hell of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp) and then came to Melbourne.
“We lost her just before the Tokyo Olympics, so it’s been a couple of years now.
“But this bracelet, when it moves up and down my arm, it’s just a direct, physical reminder each lap that ‘yes, this is hard, but what she went through, you can’t even compare’.
Read ther article by John Salvado in The West Australian (AAP).