He wasn't the first gifted athlete to turn to a sport outside of traditional athletics and it is the transition between Little Athletics to the senior clubs that appears to be the drop-off point for many a grassroots athletics club in the country.

Local athletics clubs have proven to be no different with the Queanbeyan Little Athletics Centre enrolling 215 athletes last year as opposed to the 15 athletes in the senior club.

President of the Queanbeyan Athletics Club Stephanie Pollard said that the facilitation of a successful transition from juniors to seniors is a challenging aspect of the sport.

"We do have a lot of kids in the Little Athletics which is good, so we're quite strong in Little Athletics but the difficult part now is trying to turn those athletes over to the senior competitions," she said.

"Our club is quite small which is a bit unfortunate."

Local sprinter Kayla Sadler came up through the Queanbeyan Little Athletics system before joining a senior club, and has also noticed a decline in numbers as she has matured.

"From what I've seen it has been pretty hard to retain athletes," she said

"By the time they reach seniors, they're not interested anymore and it's rather disappointing because I would love to see more junior athletes coming up and pushing themselves and getting involved in all the events. It used to be packed when I was younger and now you just don't see many people out there anymore."

The 18-year-old believes that her time with QLAC was rewarding, and provided a strong athletic foundation for her to build upon.

"It was amazing, they were probably the best support I could get," Sadler said.

"They supported me through every competition I went to, they were always there, they helped me out financially and it was just a good training ground for me."

After parting ways with QLAC at the age of 15, Sadler joined fellow former local and Olympic sprinter Matthew Beckenham's athletic club and subsequently became one of the rare transitional success stories, winning the 70m instalment of the Merimbula Gift on Sunday, January 10.