ScottEvil wrote:
VIPAM wrote:
Athing MU turned pro today, watch her break the women's 800m AR 1:55.51 this year. Hopefully she continue to run for many years and destroy our memory of Pamela Jelimo
Did we ever find out what Pamela Jelimo's story was? She came on the scene like a WR contender and then just as quickly disappeared. Popped for PEDs and then quietly retired perhaps?
I'll long remember the interview she and her husband gave with the Guardian [1] because so many things about it were strange.
Though honestly OP I am wondering if you meant to type Caster Semenya
[1]
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2009/jul/26/pamela-jelimo-athletics-kenya
No, Pamela Jelimo wasn't on performance enhancing drugs. Pamela Jelimo is believed to be DSD, intersex, (female on the outside but with testes and male chromosomes on the inside) whatever you want to call that condition.
Jelimo ran her first 800 race when she was 18 years old. She had only had a year of 400 meter training at that point but she ran her first 800 in a very fast 2:01.02.
Just 6 weeks later she had dropped all the way down to a completely ridiculous 1:54.99 !!!
100% females simply don't run 1:54 as a teenager with very little training. And they definitely don't go from 2:01 to 1:54 in just 6 weeks.
Even with large amounts of drugs, years of very hard work, and intensive state sponsored training programs, the Eastern European women from the 1980s couldn't do that as teenagers. In fact, only 2 Eastern European women in the 1980s ever ran faster than Jelimo's PB of 1:54.01, and they were fully mature women who had each trained for more than a decade to do that.
The only other teenager in history to drop their 800 time almost as fast as Jelimo? Caster Semenya. But even Semenya took 6 months to go from 2:00.58 to 1:55.45.
Compared to Semenya, Jelimo improved her 800 time 2 seconds more, in 4 months less. Wow!