Record-setting Merlene Ottey aims to run at world championship

Veteran sprinter Merlene Ottey is already eyeing a spot at next year's world championships in South Korea after becoming the oldest athlete to compete at a European championships on Saturday. 

The Jamaican-born 50-year-old, whose haul of nine Olympic medals is more than any other woman's in track and field, has been competing for adopted country Slovenia since 2002 and was by far the biggest attraction at a muggy Olympic Stadium in Barcelona as she anchored their 4x100 metres relay team.                                           

Although the team failed to qualify for Sunday's final, the remarkably youthful-looking Ottey was excited to have made history and even refused to rule out an appearance at the 2012 Olympic Games in London.  

"Yeah, it's a great feeling," she told reporters in the depths of the arena, spending almost an hour after the relay heat giving at least a dozen interviews. 

Clad in a pale blue-and-white running vest and baby blue, skin-tight shorts, she added: "I find it a challenge and it's a joy competing against people younger than me.                                           

"I guess it's my genes. I try to push myself to the limit. This is how I get my adrenalin."                                           

Second slower                                            

Ottey, who has become known as "the Queen of the Track", won her first Olympic medal at the 1980 Moscow Olympics when she claimed bronze in the 200 metres and has won another 33 major medals in the three decades since.

"There was zero pressure on me back then," she recalled. "When I went there I was a nobody and nobody bothered me."                                           

She said she planned to train in California or Florida to prepare a bid to qualify for the world championships and laughed when asked if she was aiming to compete in London. 

These days she runs about a second slower than her personal best of 10.74 set in Milan in 1996.

"I don't see the end at the moment," she said. "My goal now is to try to qualify for the world championships. As for the Olympics, ask me after the worlds."

Although obviously relishing the chance to compete in Barcelona, she said she was disappointed the Slovenians had failed to get through to the relay final. 

"I knew right away that we didn''t qualify so I was disappointed," she said.

"If one of the other teams had made a mistake we might have had a chance but it wasn't to be."