Erica Hawley says that any self-doubts she harboured before the Commonwealth Games have been replaced with a new-found confidence.
Hawley feared that she might not be ready for the Gold Coast, believing she could get swallowed up by a field including the world’s top women’s triathletes.
She need not have worried.
The 19-year-old produced a performance full of promise in the individual race, coming sixteenth, just eight seconds behind Olympian Gillian Sanders and ahead of Simone Ackermann, Sanders’ South African team-mate.