Maryam Yusuf Jamal of Bahrain wins the women's 3000m at the Oslo Golden League meeting (© Getty Images)
OsloMaryam Jamal’s is a name that the athletics world has seen a lot of this year. And after she breezed to a world-leading 8:28.87 win in the 3000m here tonight, it’s a name that we might have to begin getting used to.
And not just in the 3000m. Earlier this season, the 20-year-old Bahraini clocked 1:59.69 in the 800m, and 3:59.13 for 1500m, briefly a world-leading performance. But the 3000m, she said tonight, is her preferred distance.
“My favourite distance is the 3000m, but I can also run all of them, the 800m, 1500m,” she said, sporting a sincere smile. “I have speed and I have endurance.”
Both were amply on display in Oslo when she easily dispatched Olympic 5000m silver medallist Isabella Ochichi heading into the final turn to beat the Kenyan by nearly three seconds.
“The race was good, and I’m really happy with the performance.” Jamal said she felt very relaxed after her race, and was hardly winded. “I think I could have gone faster.”
Based in Switzerland
Born Zenebech Tola in Arsi, Ethiopia, the village that also gave Haile Gebreselassie to the athletics world, Jamal began running at 16. “Yes, of course,” she laughed, “I knew a lot about him.”
Part of the ethnic Oromo group, the single largest group in the country but who only play a minority role in politics, Jamal and her husband, Tareq Yaqoob - the former Mnashu Taye - fled Ethiopia for personal and political reasons in 2002, and have based in Lausanne since. Last year, the pair switched allegiance to Bahrain, for which she’ll compete at next month’s World Championships.
She made her first splash this season with her runner-up finish in the Hengelo 5000m in May, where she finished just behind Ochichi, 14:50.96 to 14:51.68. At a low-key meeting in Geneva in early June, she entered sub-two minute territory in the 800m, clocking 1:59.69, winning by three seconds. In mid-June, she surprised with a commanding 3:59.13 1500m win in the Athens Super Grand Prix, winning by more than two seconds. In her last outing, she won the 1500m handily in Lausanne, clocking 4:01.73.
“I hope to run the 1500m in Helsinki, but won’t know until the end of the weekend,” she said.
Jamal said she hasn’t been too surprised by her gradual breakthrough in the middle and long distance events, and feels that it’s but a start to what she hopes will be a long career.
“I’m not surprised at all with my season. I train very hard, which is why I’m running well this year.”
Her competitors should no longer be surprised either.
Based in Lausanne since 2002, Jamal spent the past three weeks training at altitude in St. Moritz.
Bob Ramsak for the IAAF