Kelsey-Lee Barber hopes nationals leads Tokyo Olympic Games

Canberra's world champion javelin thrower Kelsey-Lee Barber was excited to hear the International Olympic Committee was planning for the Olympics to start on July 24 as planned.

They made the announcement on Thursday that they would push on as if the Games are going ahead.

While the Australian athletics championships were due to start on Saturday, Athletics Australia have postponed them indefinitely.

Barber hoped, pandemic permitting, they could be rescheduled as a lead-up to Tokyo.

Her competition plans have been thrown into turmoil, with track-and-field meets around the world up in the air.

Holding the nationals in the weeks before the Olympics would provide the perfect return to competition.

Barber will go into this year's Olympics as one of Australia's leading gold-medal hopes having won the world title last year.

She's already thrown a qualifying mark, but the national title would give her a guaranteed ticket.

Rankings could be used to determine who qualifies if the nationals don't go ahead.

"At the moment we've had to make some pretty big changes to our season, especially to our competitions with them not going ahead," Barber said.

"We work with the information we've got at this stage and hopefully there'll be some competitions that are run just before the Olympics.

"If not I'm sure there'll be plans within Australia to run some competitions where we can.

"Nationals has been postponed to a later date so hopefully that comes back on the cards."

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Barber was glad they still had a date to work towards - August 4.

That's when they'll hold the qualifying rounds for the women's javelin, with the final three days later.

The 28-year-old's aiming to be there in the middle of the track when the medals are being decided.

"It's good news to hear the Olympics are still on. That's what we're all hoping and keeping our fingers crossed that it will go ahead," she said.

"We will keep training and aiming towards that goal.

"It's nice to be reassured that they're still having conversations and they are still trying to put things in place that we can still hold the Olympics this year.

"I don't want to speculate too much about it not going ahead either. The fact they're still having those conversations and still discussing what will happen, and still monitoring is all really positive.

"I need to believe they're making the right decisions."

Barber has been doing everything possible to stay out of the coronavirus's way since it arrived in Canberra.

If she's not at training then she's at home relaxing.

She said athletes never wanted to be sick - because you never knew how it would affect you and how you would bounce back.

"As athletes we don't want to be sick ever. You want to stay as healthy as you can because you don't know how it's going to affect your system," she said.

"Then it's the week of training you miss and two weeks reload before you're back into it.

"It can linger longer than you expected sometimes and you don't know the severity of what you're going to get."