Career
Samuels was born in 1988 to mother Tracy Samuels and father Mark Samuels. She is the second eldest of 4 children and the family grew up in Merrylands, a suburb of Sydney and started athletics at Greystanes Little Athletics club.
Samuels first attended Merrylands Public School and the school is still proud of her great achievements, she then moved onto Westfields Sports High School as a basketballer before changing to train with her coach Denis Knowles in the Westfields athletic program.
Her first global appearance came in the shot put at the 2003 IAAF World Youth Championships at the age of fifteen, at which she finished 13th in the qualifying rounds. She returned to the competition two years later and demonstrated her potential by winning the bronze medal in the shot put with a new personal best throw of 15.53 m, but she showed that her abilities were also well-suited to the discus as she took the gold medal in that competition. Samuels also took part in the Australian Youth Olympic Festival in 2005, winning the shot put and taking second place in the discus throw.
The following year she opened her season with an appearance at the 2006 Commonwealth Games – her first major senior championship. She reached the shot put final, finishing twelfth overall, but again it was in the discus where she excelled, winning the bronze medal at the age of seventeen. She threw a discus personal best of 60.63 m to take home the title at the 2006 World Junior Championships in Athletics and was seventh overall in the shot put. Following this, she opted to focus solely on the discus throw at major tournaments. She closed the year with a sixth place performance at the 2006 IAAF World Cup, representing Oceania.
She became the joint Australian champion in the shot put with 'Ana Po'uhila at the start of 2007 and also won her first national title in the discus. She threw a near personal best of 60.47 m to take the silver medal behind Yarelis Barrios at the 2007 Summer Universiade. A few weeks later she took part in her first ever World Championships in Athletics. However, she just missed out on qualifying for the final round of the women's discus competition as she was the best performing non-qualifier.
In 2008 she won her second discus national title and improved her best to 62.95 m in Brisbane. She reached the Olympic final in the discus at the 2008 Beijing Games, throwing 60.15 m for ninth place. Competing at the 2009 Summer Universiade, she became the Universiade champion, beating Żaneta Glanc to the gold medal by a margin of nearly two metres.
She achieved a personal best throw is 65.44 metres at the World Championships in Berlin on 21 August 2009, winning her the gold medal. Samuels took part in the final edition of the IAAF World Athletics Final, but she was past her season's peak form and took fifth place with a sub-60 metre throw. She started strongly the following year, opening her season with a personal best of 65.84 m to win at the Sydney Track Classic in February. She gave a consistent series of throws at the 2010 Australian Championships and won her sixth consecutive national title (indoor and out) with a best throw of 63.31 m.
On 21 September 2010 Samuels withdrew from the Australian team for the 2010 Commonwealth Games. She cited concerns over “health and security in Delhi”.
Read more about this topic: Dani Samuels
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