Merlene OTTEY

Following her two individual bronze medals and relay gold at the 1991 World Championships in Tokyo, Merlene Ottey made a strong start to 1992 when she broke the world indoor record over 60m at Madrid on 14 February, setting a new time of 6.96sec. The major event of the year was the Olympic Games in Barcelona, and Ottey had been in good form in the early part of the season, setting the year's fastest 100m time of 10.80sec. The 100m final at Barcelona, held on 1 August, was one of the greatest sprint races of all time. By the 75 metre mark, the five athletes in lanes 2 to 6 (see photo above, Ottey in lane 4) were virtually in a straight line as they drove for the finish. They hit the line virtually inseparable, and only after close examination of the photo finish was it announced that Ottey had finished an unlucky fifth.

The first five placesetters were separated by only 0.06sec, and no one in history had run as fast as Ottey's 10.88sec over 100m and only finished fifth. It seemed that Ottey had a better chance in the 200m when she won the first semi-final in 22.12sec. In the final, Merlene led the field into the straight, but she was quickly overhauled by Gwen Torrence (USA), and then, just before the line, by fellow Jamaican Juliet Cuthbert, leaving Merlene with yet another Olympic bronze medal. The Jamaican 4 x 100m relay team, which had won the gold medal at the previous year's World Championships, seemed on track to repeat that performance when the team, anchored by Ottey, won the second semi-final in 42.28sec. However, tragedy struck the Jamaican team in the final, when Cuthbert, running the second leg, pulled up lame just before she was due to pass the baton. (Ron Casey)

By 1993, Merlene Ottey was starting to gain a reputation of being the perennial bridesmaid at major global championships. Admittedly she had won a relay gold medal at the 1991 World Championships, and individual gold medals at World Indoor Championships, but her individual medal tally prior to the 1993 World Championships in Stuttgart stood at 4 bronzes from the Olympics, and a silver and four bronzes from the World Championships.

There seemed a good chance that this situation could change in Stuttgart, where Ottey won her semi-final of the 100m on 16 August in 10.87sec. The other semi-final was won by the reigning Olympic champion Gail Devers, who quickly established a lead in the final held later that day. Ottey closed quickly on Devers in the last five metres, and the two hit the tape locked together. After an examination of the finish photo, a protest by the Jamaican team, and a re-examination of the photo by the Jury of Appeal, it was finally announced that Devers had beaten Ottey by one thousandth of a second, 10.811sec to 10.812sec.

Ottey's reward finally came in the 200m final three days later. Ottey held a comfortable lead over reigning Olympic champion Gwen Torrence (USA) into the straight, and seemed to be heading for an easy victory, until Torrence started to unleash a storming finish. Meanwhile Ottey started to lose her form in the final 10 metres, and stared to overstride, but she just had enough lead to hold off the charging Torrence by two hundredths of a second to win (see photo above) her first individual gold medal at a World Championships in a time of 21.98sec. Merlene won a third medal when she anchored Jamaica to a third place finish in the 4 x 100m relay final. (Ron Casey)

After finally breaking through for a long overdue gold medal at the 1993 World Championships, Merlene Ottey started the following year strongly, setting a new 50m world indoor record at Moscow on 4 February. Ottey missed a lot of the outdoor season through injury, and although she came back to tie her Commonwealth record of 10.78sec when winning the Grand Prix final in Paris, she chose not to defend her 100m and 200m titles at the Commonwealth Games in Victoria. On 10 May 1995, Ottey officially acquired veteran status when she celebrated her 35th birthday, but like a fine wine, Merlene continued to improve rather than let advancing age slow her down.

At the World Championships in Gothenburg, Ottey breezed through the first two rounds of the 100m on 6 August (see photo above) before finishing a close second to Gwen Torrence in the semi-final the following day. In the final, Ottey again finished second behind Torrence, and Merlene's silver was her 11th world championships medal, a record for any athlete male or female. In the 200m final, Torrence crossed the line first a good three metres ahead of Ottey, but was sensationally disqualified for stepping inside her lane on the bend. Few felt that Torrence's transgression was intentional or would have altered the final result, but at the end of the day, it was Ottey who was awarded the gold medal, and thus she successfully retained her world title. Ottey further extended her record world championships medal tally to 13 when she anchored the Jamaican 4 x 100m relay team to a silver medal finish. Following her birthday, Ottey made several improvements upon the 100m and 200m world veterans records, and at the end of 1995, she had reduced the records to 10.85sec and 21.93sec respectively. (Ron Casey)

 In 1995 Merlene Ottey won her 13th medal in World Championships competition, and three of these had been coloured gold. In contrast, her medal haul from the four Olympic Games in which she had competed up to that time had been four bronze medals. At 36 years of age, it seemed that Ottey's last chance to improve on this record would come at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. In the 100m at Atlanta, Ottey won the first semi-final in 10.93sec, while defending champion Gail Devers (USA) won the second semi-final. Devers had beaten Ottey by a minuscule one thousandth of a second in the 100m at the 1993 World Championships in Stuttgart, and in an uncanny rerun of that race, Ottey closed on the faster-starting Devers in the final stages of the Olympic final, and they both hit the tape together.

As in Stuttgart, it needed a photo to separate them, and again Devers was declared the winner, only five thousandths of second ahead of Ottey. Merlene had another opportunity to win an Olympic gold medal in the 200m, and she easily made it through the first two rounds on 31 July (see photo above : taken by  G.Herringshaw ©) to eventually qualify for the final the following day. In the final, it seemed that Ottey might finally win an Olympic gold medal when she led into the straight, but she had to again settle for the silver medal after Frenchwoman Marie-Jose Perec caught her 15 metres from the finish. In the 4 x 100m relay, Ottey won her 7th Olympic medal when she anchored the Jamaican team to a third place finish. Just to prove that she was still a force to be reckoned with in international athletics, the 36 year-old Ottey ran a career best time of 10.74sec over 100m at the Grand Prix final in Milan just after the Olympics, which moved her to second on the all-time world list. (Ron Casey)

As Merlene Ottey's incredible athletics career extended well past her 35th birthday, she started to amass a number of achievements that were a testimony to both her endurance and the proclivity of her outstanding performances over the years. At the 1995 World Championships, Merlene became the oldest ever female gold medallist, when she won the 200m at an age of 35 years 92 days. At the 1997 World Championships in Athens, it appeared that Ottey was going to successfully defend her 200m title when she led into the straight, but she eventually finished third after fading in the closing stages. Ottey's bronze medal made her the oldest female medallist ever at 37 years 90 days, and also brought her total medals at World Championships to an incredible 14, four more than the next best performer, Carl Lewis (USA). In 1999, Ottey withdrew from what would have been her seventh World Championships when she was suspended following reports that she had tested positive for the drug Nandrolene on 5 July in Lucerne.

However, a year later the IAAF Arbitration Panel decided that there were no grounds to maintain the suspension and had it immediately lifted. Many thought that this incident might signal the end of Ottey's career, but she returned to the track, at age 40, to compete in her sixth Olympic Games at Sydney in 2000. In Sydney, Ottey easily made it through the heats of the 100m (see photo above) on 22 September, and in the final the following day, she finished fourth, missing the bronze medal by only 0.01sec. However, some years later Marion Jones was stripped of her gold medal after admitting she had lied about her involvement in the use of illegal drugs, thus meaning that Ottey moved up a place into the bronze medal position.

Merlene's final Olympic appearance in Jamaican colours came in the 4 x 100m relay, where she anchored the team to a second place finish, to earn her 8th Olympic medal (later, of course, to become 9). No female athlete in history had won more medals, and no medallist had ever been older than Ottey's 40 years 143 days. Remarkably though that was not the final time that Merlene would be seen at the Olympic Games; after becoming a Slovenian citizen in 2002 she would go on to represent them in the 2004 Olympics in Athens, where she reached the semi-finals of the 100m. (Ron Casey)