Who is Merlene Ottey

Follow us on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/pages/News-Story-of-the-Day/102093479848944 "You mean if somebody wants to cut me into pieces to find what I'm made of?" she beams. "Well, I'll have plenty of time to think about it because I plan to live till I'm 120-plus!" She pauses, laughs and promises: "Only kiddin'". Except can we really be sure she is? For this is track's most enduring and ageless monument, the woman who seems to be cheating time itself. On Saturday, here at the European Championships in Barcelona, the most bemedalled athlete in history will compete for Slovenia in a major event, in the sprint relay, 30 years and three days since she ran at her first, in the Moscow Olympics, for Jamaica. Two months after her 50th birthday, this seems impossible. Even to her. "Last year, doctors were telling me to stop or I'd end up in a wheelchair, but now I'm here and I'm thinking, 'Wow, girl, you are still here, still doin' it after all these years'. You know, I can't quite believe it." Nor can any of us. It is why as she sits in her hotel lounge, impossibly still looking as lithe and youthful as her competitors, most of whom were not even born when she won the first of 33 major championship medals, she is still the event's most graceful centre of attention. It is why a frazzled Spanish television man had been buzzing around all morning desperate for an interview. He had rung her room a dozen times, knocked on her hotel door and beseeched her with a bunch of flowers. Ottey, as only the best divas can, kept him waiting, but when she finally deigned to give him five minutes with that famous but deceptively haughty air, he ended up swooning and telling her, "We ove you, Merlene!" Yes, the grande dame of the track casts more of a spell with each passing year. In an interview 15 years ago, she told me how her young rivals called her "grandma" and I recall describing her even then as a miracle of the track at 35. Now it turns out the real miracle is that she believes we are all going to watch her at her eighth Olympic Games, at London 2012. "Don't count me out yet — you never know," she says. "It would be fantastic and I think I'll make it." The point is that Ottey never says never. "Years ago, I stopped listening to people who said, 'It's impossible for this old lady to do anything'. They said it at 30, and at 40, but at 44 I ran 11.09." Then she slaps her thigh as she declares: "So if these old legs are holding up you'll find me still runnin' when I'm 60. And, hopefully, it will be fast also. I'll run until my body says no more." Which she is prepared to accept could be sooner rather than later. Years of sprint explosions mean she suffers lower back problems and has five titanium screws holding her hamstring and gluteus together. Last year she had such excruciating problems with an inflamed left knee that she could not even bend over in the blocks and could only walk downstairs backwards. "I thought that was it, that I was going to have to quit. Some doctors said I should give up. Yet it healed itself." Yes, she ponders, another miracle. Either that or a new diet of organic greens. This year, hampered also by allergies, has been a poor one by her standards and the perfectionist who is described by her coach, Srdjan Djordjevic, as "a one in 10 million athlete", was mad that she did not achieve the qualifying standard for the individual 100m of 11.50 sec. Still, she has clocked three world over-50 records recently, her latest being 11.67 at a Slovenian league meeting. Effectively, she has run a whole second faster than any woman her age has ever done. "There's no point in me running in Masters [veterans'] events unless it's against the men. And I mean the 40-year-old men, not the 50s," she says. "But I'd like to think I'm an inspiration for other 50 year-olds. I like the idea of people being able to realise that the journey doesn't have to end when you're 25, that you can still be setting records and enjoying your sports 25 years later." telegraph.co.uk