It was the blonde moment on the road to glorious gold. Australian Dani Samuels was sitting in 10th place in the world championships discus final on Friday night, needing to improve at least two places if she was to remain in the competition when the field was cut from 12 to eight for the final three rounds.

And she couldn’t find her favourite discus.

The 21-year-old started to get agitated, thinking one of the other competitors must have taken the purple-rimmed discus — which is heavier in the rim than most — and put it in their bag.

The officials were called in.

And then one of then pointed out to the Australian that the implement she was looking for was in the rack, right where it was meant to be.

“That was actually a bit of a blonde moment,” said Samuels.

“There were actually two sitting right in front of me.

“I throw the ones with purple rims and I only saw the ones with orange rims.

“I quickly scanned them and thought ‘it’s not there, someone must have thrown it’.

“I was saying ‘I need, it’, the officials were looking around and all of a sudden one said ‘is that it?’

“I was like ‘oh, sorry about that’.”

With the potential crisis avoided, Samuels steeled herself and put in a 62.71m throw to stay alive in the competition and move into third place.

And it only got better in the next two rounds, with big personal bests of 64.76m and 65.44m lifting her to second and finally into the gold-medal position.

At 21, Samuels became the youngest women’s discus medallist in world championships history.

© AAP 2012

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