Pamela Jelimo meeting with reporters on the eve of Zurich's Weltklasse (© Bob Ramsak)
Zürich, SwitzerlandPamela Jelimo was not even born when Maria Mutola made her Olympic debut and was just 13 when the Mozambican legend of women’s 800m running won the $1m Golden League Jackpot in 2003. Inevitably, the crossing of their competitive paths has been brief.
The 18-year-old Jelimo burst onto the international scene only this season while the 35-year-old Mutola has been preparing for her retirement. And, here tomorrow, in the Letzigrund Stadium, Jelimo is all but guaranteed to see that Mutola’s last international race ends in defeat and takes the Kenyan to within one race of becoming a Jackpot winner herself.
Before her Olympic triumph in Beijing last week, Jelimo had put together four successive victories on the ÅF Golden League circuit – in Berlin, Oslo, Rome and Paris – to remain standing as one of only two athletes still in contention for this season’s ÅF Golden League $1 Million Jackpot prize.
In 2003, Mutola completed the requisite six victories and, with no other athlete able to accomplish the feat that season, she scooped the full $1m. As of now, Jelimo may have to share the six-figure sum with Blanka Vlasic but the Croatian high jumper was beaten in Beijing and looks less secure than the Kenyan in her jackpot quest.
Mutola today had a little advice for Jelimo on how not to blow her $1m chance, albeit she thought it unnecessary to give it. “I’m sure she is doing a good job,” Mutola said. “If somebody can run a little bit faster than you, I don’t think they need advice. I think she is doing good and that she is on her way to breaking the World record for sure.”
“This is getting to the nervous stage (with only two jackpot races to go). It’s when athletes have to focus more and they have to do what they do best – which is focus on winning. There’s only two more races to go (Zurich and Brussels) so I don’t see any problem for her because, if she runs 1:54, I don’t think anybody will come close.”
As if Jelimo hasn’t accomplished enough this season – four World junior records, three African records, African Championships and Olympic gold medals – she is being asked for more.
The director of tomorrow’s Weltklasse Zürich meeting, Patrick Magyar, has loaded the field with two World champions, two Olympic champions, and a pacemaker who, 10 days ago, was finishing fourth – one place ahead of Mutola – in the Olympic final.
The line-up includes not only the freshly minted Olympic 800m champion but Nancy Jebet Lagat, the Kenyan winner of the 1500m in Beijing, Maryam Yusuf Jamal, the World 1500m champion, and Janeth Jepkosgei, the World 800m champion. Setting the pace will be Svetlana Klyuka, who narrowly missed out on an 800m medal in Beijing.
“We had a very special request from Pamela Jelimo to help her with the pacemaking,” Magyar said. “She feels it is very hard to run on her own early in the race. The problem is that the speed this lady is running at does not allow many options for pacemakers. But we found such an athlete in Svetlana Klyuka.”
It was with her trademark front-running that Jelimo won in Beijing, improving her own World Junior record to 1:54.87. Of her potential to beat Jarmila Kratochvilova’s 25-year-old World record (1:53.28) Jelimo today seemed to rule it out for this season when she said: “I’m tired but I’m going to do my best next year.”
Of her jackpot prospects, Jelimo said: “I am not thinking about the Jackpot, I am only looking for the position. I am going to do my best tomorrow and, if I win, it is going to be ok but, if somebody else wins, it is no problem.”
It was here in Zürich that Mutola set one of the most remarkable sequences in Grand Prix history, 12 successive Weltklasse wins over 800m from 1993 to 2004. In 1994, she clocked what remains her lifetime best mark (1:55.19) So there is nowhere more fitting a place than the Letzigrund Stadium for her to bring down the curtain on her international career.
“It feels a little bit strange but good at the same time,” Mutola said. “It’s been a very long and successful career and to finish in Zürich means a lot to me because I perform well here. So it is very exciting and very sad at the same time to leave athletics.”
David Powell for the IAAF
