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Australia's best track and field athletes are competing at the National Championships in Sydney this weekend, in an important selection stepping stone for July's Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. 18-year-old Indigenous and para-athlete Layla Sharp will contest the 100 and 200 metres and long jump

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00:01Well, I'm hoping for PBs, that would be the ultimate goal, to re-break my Australian record
00:05in long jump would be amazing at this point in the season.
00:08I'm feeling really fit, I'm in great form, so looking at PBs in the 1 and the 2 would
00:12be amazing and the goal.
00:14I'm hoping to make the final for the 200, 100 I'm not really sure, it could go anyway
00:18depending on how people run in the para category, we've got a lot of numbers, so it could go
00:22anyway, we'll see, hopefully PBs, so that's the main objective at this point in the season,
00:26just continuing the momentum would be great.
00:28Last year, big year for you, World Championships debut, what was that experience like?
00:32Oh, it was amazing, it was so cool, it was just great, honestly, I don't know how to
00:37summarise it, but it was so good just to see everyone make friends and be over there in
00:42India, it was such a different experience to what I had expected, you couldn't really
00:45think of how it would go and I was just so happy to get out there and have fun and
00:49run
00:49well really and have my first World Champs, it was pretty cool, at my age of 17, so it's
00:54a great time to just get out there, first time international people, put into perspective
00:58what my competition's looking like and what I need to push for for the future and I sort
01:03of did World Champs and post World Champs, I've decided, you know what, I want to give
01:06Long Jump a shot, I've got the sprints, I want to give it a shot in Long Jump, so yeah,
01:10it was a great way to see my competitors, because you can sort of see it on a piece of
01:13paper,
01:14but it doesn't really compare unless you're racing against them and you're like, oh wow,
01:17these are the people that I need to be up with, so yeah, it was a really eye-opening experience.
01:22The main event this year is the Commonwealth Games, how exciting is that prospect for you?
01:27Oh, so exciting, I'd love to go to Commonwealth Games, obviously I had my debut last year
01:31and I'd just like to keep going to international events and make every single one if I could,
01:35so Comm Games would be pretty cool, it would be really great to go to Scotland, Glasgow,
01:40it would be pretty interesting to go compete over there, I haven't been to Europe before,
01:43so yeah, hopefully I can make it, but we'll see. Talk about the para sprinting community at the
01:49moment in Australia, how strong is it, what sort of growth do you see in terms of the numbers and
01:55the level of competition? Oh, it's so strong at the moment, you know, a couple of years ago when
01:59you were younger of course you could stroll into nationals and not to make like a joke of the sport
02:04as such, but you could sort of, the expectations weren't there as such, but now it's become really
02:09like tough, you need to be on your A game if you want to get up there and do well,
02:13so I think it's
02:14really good to see the little ones getting more competitive because, you know, we've had a bit
02:17of that fun aspect and I want, like it's very important for the para sport to be taken seriously,
02:21so it's really good to see it going so well in Australia, we've got a lot of up-and-coming
02:25sprinters in the T38 and a lot of people that have been there from the start, so it's really good,
02:29the numbers are going great, people are getting better, you know, we've got a lot of sub-30,
02:32200 T38 runners which is really good to see, back like three years ago you would have been
02:37seeing like maybe two or three of them, so it's really good to see about six now maybe, so
02:42yeah, we've got a lot of people and potentials and a lot of people that could, you know, make waves
02:46and change things and I'm hoping to be one of them and get up there a bit higher in the
02:49sprints as well
02:49as the jumps.
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