Athletics coming home: Lever throws reunion party

Dressed in her green-and-gold team tracksuit and talking with her thick Aussie accent, Alison Lever hardly seems like one of the locals as she emerges from the Commonwealth Games Village and strolls across Wilmslow Road in suburban Manchester. It just so happens, though, that Australia's hope for a medal in the women's discus on Tuesday night was born a Mancunian and raised as a Greater Mancunian for 11 years.

"Yeah, I was born in Manchester and brought up in Oldham," she says, settling into a roadside seat outside a coffee shop. "It still feels like home here. I've been up to where I used to live in Oldham and it hasn't changed much. I went back to my old school yesterday, Lyndhurst Junior. It brought back happy memories."

The very prospect of revisiting her roots to compete in a home-from-home Commonwealth Games has actually been responsible for keeping Lever in track and field. "I was going to retire after the Sydney Olympics," she says. "Sydney was such a big thing to compete in as an Australian athlete it was very difficult to get motivated again afterwards. A lot of Australian athletes retired.

"It was the thought of coming to Manchester that got me over the hangover and kept me in the sport. My parents really wanted me to train on to the Manchester Games, because it's where I was born. And I'm really glad I'm here."

Lever's parents, Frank and Linda, are here too. Her brother, Christopher arrives with his girlfriend tomorrow, swelling the army of friends and family who will be in the City of Manchester Stadium on Tuesday night to the 30 mark.

It was in 1983 that the Levers left Oldham, seven miles up the A62 from Manchester, to settle in Brisbane, 11,413 miles across the globe. "My uncle Roger had moved out to Australia 10 years previously and he persuaded my mum and dad that there were great opportunities over there," Alison says. "My dad was a factory worker here and I think he would have been made redundant if we'd stayed. He's never been out of work as a printer since we moved to Brisbane, so it was a good move in that respect."

It was a good move for Alison too. A member of the Oldham town badminton team as a 10-year-old, she has grown to be a world-class discus thrower as a 29-year-old naturalised Australian. She won a bronze medal at the last Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur four years ago and stands second in the current Commonwealth rankings, with a season's best of 61.67m. Beatrice Faumuina, the 1997 world champion and 1998 Commonwealth champion from New Zealand, stands top with a throw of 65.05m.

"I'd really love a gold medal this time," Lever says. "Beatrice has thrown well this year but I've beaten her before. That was two years ago and I'm in much better shape now. I've been going really, really well in training and if I can take that form into the Games I'll give Beatrice a nudge – hopefully, fingers crossed."

With another Olympics on the horizon now, Lever is planning to carry on nudging the best in the world until 2004 at least. Whether she carries on working as a primary school teacher in Brisbane, though, remains to be seen.

"I really want to go back to university and become a vet," she says. "I'd love to come over here and work in the countryside. I really loved All Creatures Great and Small when I was younger. That's my next goal."

After the golden goal on old home ground, that is.