There’s not much you can do in 0.028 seconds.

Am sure it takes me significantly longer than that to blink for a start. But for one athlete, that was the difference between reaching her eighth Olympics Games and staying at home next month. Which is sadly where she will be having just missed out on Olympic selection, in what must be her last opportunity at the impressive age of 48. No spring chicken in the world of sprinting. Seven Olympics down, training for her eighth. Sir Steve Redgrave stand aside, this woman means business.

Anyone who like me, used to devour athletics on TV as a young kid in the 1980s, will recall the name Merlene Ottey. The Jamaican-born sprinter is ranked 4th on the list of all time female athletes in the 100m, and 3rd in the 200m rankings. She was always up there on the podium, the Jamaican anthem playing loudly. Well that is until she switched allegiance away from her Caribbean roots (don’t get me started on that subject…choose your country and stick to it in my opinion, however…) Changing her nationality followed a number of controversial years for Ottey in which she fell out with the Jamaica Amateur Athletics Association (JAAA) against team selection disputes and fought to clear her name of suspected anabolic steroid use, charges that she was cleared of in 2000.

2002 was the year Ottey adopted a new country and began to represent her new home of Slovenia, training under Slovenian coach Srdjan Djordjevic. Then it was the Slovenian anthem that would belt out in athletics stadiums around the world. If you ever want to learn more about national anthems, note that Slovenian’s is taken from the 7th stanza of the poem ‘A Toast’ written by France Prešeren in 1844. No idea how the actual tune goes, less reggae undertones than Jamaica’s I imagine.

I digress.

Along with Swedish fencer Kirstin Palm, Ottey is the only woman to have competed at seven Olympic Games; her Olympic career commencing in Moscow in 1980. In five World Championships, she has won 13 medals (three gold, four silver and six bronze medals). In the Olympics, she has won two silver and five bronze medals; more Olympic medals than any other athlete from the Western Hemisphere. Not forgetting being the first female Caribbean athlete to win an Olympic medal. That was pre-Slovenia days mind. In her impressive medal collection, only an Olympic gold medal eludes her.

Call me sentimental but it would have been inspiring to witness Merlene run in Beijing – even had she not qualified for the semi final stages in the sprint events, a feat she succeeded in doing at the age of 44 in Athens. Perhaps I’m feeling particularly sentimental this month having personally witnessed the drama that unfolded at Royal Birkdale when Greg Norman, at the age of 53, threatened to claim one of the least expected sporting victories ever and take home the Claret Jug as Open Champion for a third time. A tournament he last won in 1993. Sadly for Norman, like Ottey, there was to be no fairytale ending in 2008 but regardless I applaud them both for their sheer grit and determination, physical excellence and the ability to (very nearly) defiantly roll back their glory years.

(Ottey failed by 0.028 seconds to reach her eighth Olympic Games, aged 48 in 2008).

By Stephanie Branston on July 29th, 2008

Tags: Athletics, Golf, Olympics