Kenyan runner makes a name very quickly

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It would be no surprise if you have never heard of the world’s most impressive runner this year.

After all, this runner’s name does not even appear among the approximately 3,000 listed in the women’s index of ‘Athletics 2008,’’ the definitive international guidebook to the sport.

She is Pamela Jelimo, an 18-year-old Kenyan who previously distinguished herself by winning the 2007 African junior title in the 400 meters.

Now she is the overwhelming 2008 Olympic favorite in the 800.

And she also is just one of two remaining contenders, along with Croatian high jumper Blanka Vlasic, for the $1-million bonus given to athletes who win their event at all six Golden League meets. Jelimo and Vlasic both are 4-for-4, with two meets remaining.

Jelimo jumped up to the 800 this season, and at Friday’s Golden League meet in Paris, she won with a time of 1 minute, 54.97 seconds, making her the seventh-fastest woman ever. Until Friday, when Yelena Soboleva ran 1:54.85 at the Russian Championships, Jelimo had the fastest 800 time since 1989, with a 1:54.99 from the Berlin Golden League meet in June.

Friday’s Paris race was just one of many in which Jelimo has run stunning times in 2008. Since May 24, she has broken 1:56 five times, all in major European meets. Other than Soboleva this year, no one else has run faster than 1:56 since 2003.

In a sport beset by past doping, such an emergence from nowhere obviously raises questions, especially since Jelimo has limited her interviews to post-race comments. A French colleague told me Jelimo’s agent declined a request to bring her to the press conference before the Paris meet.

Unlike Jelimo, the Russian has a track record, having set a world indoor record at 1,500 meters twice this year, taking it down to 3:57.71. She also ran this season’s fastest indoor 800 in the world (1:56.49).

According to the international track federation website, Jelimo said she moved up to the 800 because her coach, Zaid Aziz, ‘saw that I could do much better than I had done in sprinting. He saw that I could use my sprinting to my advantage in the 800m.”

The brief biographies provided at the Paris meet said Jelimo ‘has apparently run only eight 800 meter races (including one heat), the first of which was at the Kenyan African Championships Trials in Nairobi on April 19, 2008.’’

She ran that race, at altitude, in 2:01.02.

These are her times in seven 800 finals (all victories) since the debut:
1:58.70, also at altitude in the African Championships at Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, May 4.
1:55.76, at Hengelo, the Netherlands, May 24.
1:54.99, at Berlin Golden League meet, June 1.
1:55.41, at Oslo Golden League meet, June 6.
1:57.71, at altitude in Kenyan Olympic trials at Nairobi, July 5.
1:55.69, at Rome Golden League meet July 11.
1:54.97, at Paris Golden League meet July 18.
‘This was not a ‘race,’ it was a parade by an extraordinary talent,’’ said the international track federation’s account of the Paris 800.

‘With just raw talent she’ll win the Olympics,” South African marathon runner Hendrick Ramaala told the Sunday Times of Johannesburg last month. ‘I think she’s an untouchable. All that can stop her now is injury or ill-health or burn-out, but not the other runners. Those girls are psyched out already.’’

By someone they likely had not heard of three months ago.

-- Philip Hersh