London 2012 Olympics: Sally Pearson wanders off yellow brick road as she loses first 100m hurdles race of season Hence, the general rule: if Pearson gets over the barriers, she wins, taking all the famed unpredictability out of the event. Except this was the day the hurdles struck back. Perhaps Pearson really had been spooked by an accident which occurred while warming up before her heat earlier in the afternoon. She smacked into the first hurdle and got hooked beneath the second while in full cry and then hit the deck. She rose groggily but apparently unscathed, yet maybe it had subconsciously done untold damage as she hardly looked her dominating self in just ousting Wells in her heat by one-hundredth of a second. After a two-hour break before the final, Pearson might have been expected to have regained her equilibrium but although she launched into her usual jet-propelled start, Wells, recent runner-up in the US trials, managed to keep even closer order this time and over the last three barriers began to push past, winning in a season's best 12.57 sec to the Australian's 12.59 sec. This was some shock to the system. Pearson has looked every inch the potential marquee woman athlete of these forthcoming Games, an athlete with fantastic charisma oozing from the fearless, uncompromising style with which she attacks her event. Only a week before, she had blasted to the year's fastest time, 12.40 sec in Paris, and was still managing to give the impression of such manic determination that every hurdles race looks like it might be her last. Yet, here, the familiar rat-a-tat spark over the barriers was missing. Mysteriously. If she had just travelled over here wrapped up in a compression suit on a plane for 29 hours like Black Caviar, her sluggishness might have been understandable. But she has been training fruitfully in Tonbridge for the past month while staying with her family at her auntie's house. For the moment, though, Pearson's potential headache is in stark contrast to Wells's fairytale. The Virginian has had to overcome dreadful childhood experiences, suffering years of sustained sexual abuse from her step-father, to carve out a career at the highest level in athletics and she uses her profile to encourage other victims to come forward and share their stories. Wells smiled, as she stood on the start line in the rain yesterday. She just thought to herself that she was on a sun-kissed beach in Aruba, proving she has even more imagination than talent! But Pearson? Evidently she was blind to her familiar yellow brick road.