A teacher turned cheese affinage has silenced her doubters with a breath-taking win in the 2021 Change Our Game Women's Gift.
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Hayley Orman, from South Australia, clinched the win with a time of 13.91 as she won by just six-hundredths of a second ahead of Cassandra Wang Lecouteur.
2019 Women's Gift runner-up Sophia Figeria also came very close as she finished third, just nine-hundredths of a second behind Orman.
Orman said her self-belief never wavered throughout her running career, which played a key role in her landing the coveted honour and $40,000 cheque.
In December, Orman suffered a groin injury, but she said nailed her preparation in the lead-up to the race.
"I have always believed I am destined to do something amazing, but I didn't know what it was or where it would be," she said.
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"This year I was really injured and I strained my groin and I remember in December I was in the toilets upset.
"That was supposed to be my day, I have trained so hard for this but I couldn't do it.
"But I put that to bed and I trained hard and I believed my time would come and I just put my head down and my bum up."
Orman, the 27-year old sprinter, had also been told she was too old to compete with the up and coming sensations in the sport.
"If I had a dollar for every time someone said I should retire.. that just fueled me more," she said.
"I have had a lot of people come and say 'who even are you' and there are so many people who don't know my name, but I knew I was destined to achieve something."
Orman, who was born in Warragul is now building a house in Flagstaff Gardens, South Australia, where she will return to training and aging cheese.
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"I'm a teacher turned cheese affinage or cheese ager, and my cheese is sold Australian wide and a lot of Melbourne business stock my cheeses.
"So that is what I do and I know it is very odd.
"I am a trained food technology teacher, but I was struggling to break into the education life and so I took a bit of a detour.
"I love food, it is my second love behind running and it just happened to fall this way.
"So that is what I do, I age cheese and run fast.
"I have just stepped into realising that I still have a lot to give so I think we will have to sit back, reassess and put the red colour on for a bit and keep going."
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