altMarch 22 - Australia has picked a bigger than normal athletics team for this year's World Championships to give them the opportunity to impress before London 2012, including teenage sprinter Melissa Breen (pictured).

 

The current team of 39 for the event in Berlin, which starts on August 15, is already nearly double the size of the squad which was sent to the 2005 World Championships in Helsinki, when 19 athletes travelled.

 

The team is predicted to swell beyond 50 before the final selector’s meeting on July 20.

 

It is led by Steve Hooker, the Olympic pole vault champion.

 

It also include Jana Rawlinson, the defending world 400 metres hurdles champion who had to withdraw from last year's Olympics in Beijing due to injury.

 

Eric Hollingsworth, the Londoner who is Athletics Australia's high performance manager, said: 

“This is the start of a four-year strategy to introduce as many high performance athletes to the pressures of world class athletics. 
 
“This is a great opportunity for our athletes to grow and grasp a chance at Olympic success.
 
"Athletes need to keep in mind that Australian team selection will get increasingly more difficult as we travel towards London.
 
“To achieve Olympic dreams for London, athletes will have had to have improved over the four year journey to make sure we can guarantee successful results at the London Olympics.
 

"The message is if you don't perform, don't expect the opportunity again.

 

"It is a big team because it is a four-year strategy and the first year is about finding out what our athletes can do, finding out how they are going to cope with the pressure before we start refining that situation down.

 

"Obviously the [2010] Commonwealth Games will be fairly big as well but from then on it is about raising the bar in performance and making sure the athletes that we do take away to the World Championships and the Olympics are of the very finest quality."

 
Of the 39 team, 16 will be making their World Championships debut.
 
Currently, Breen is the youngest athlete at 18 years of age, whilst Patrick Johnson at twice her age, is the oldest at 36.
 
The sprinter, picked for the 4x100m relay, will be making is fifth appearance in the World Championships.
 
Breen, who is from Canberra, topped last year's Australian rankings in the 100m with a personal best of 11.33sec.
 
It also marks the first time Hollingsworth (pictured) has led an Australian team to a major event.
 
altThe Briton, a former youth team footballer with West Ham United and the training partner of two-time Olympic decathlon champion Daley Thompson, was previously the performance director of Athletics New Zealand.
 

He said: "At the start of an Olympic cycle we need to blood athletes.

 

"One of the things that I have identified over the years is that Australian athletes have the quality but they tend to fail under the pressure.

 

"So what this does is start to educate us as an organisation about the pressure they can handle.

 

"It is okay replicating and doing it in small meets but there is nothing like a championships."