NAIROBI, June 16 (Xinhua) -- The Kenyan sporting fraternity is expressing concerns about the faltering performance of Olympic 800m champion Pamela Jelimo.
After winning the Olympic title in Beijing last year, Jelimo followed it with the AF Golden League Jackpot where she was the sole winner of the 1 million US dollars after she won all her races in the 800m event.
This year, Jelimo is yet to win a race even on the local scene where she has been entering Athletics Kenya-sponsored invitational meet and is equally not faring better on the international scene where last month she was placed sixth at a meet in Rabat, Morocco and while this month in Oregon, she became last in her specialty.
National athletics coach Julius Kirwa says that Jelimo¡¯s abysmal performance might be her Achilles Heel.
¡°Meet organizers will start shunning her when she stops adding value to their events. If she continued on her winning streak her bargaining power would soar but as things stand now, she has a lot to prove before she attracts their goodwill,¡± Kirwa told Xinhua.
Jelimo captured the imagination of the nation and became the focal point in 2008 at a time Kenya was reeling from political turmoil that followed the post-December 2007 presidential elections.
She rose from obscurity to stardom and fortune in a span of about a year at only 19.
She sounded the war drums in April 2008 when she won the continental 800m title at the African Championships in Athletics in Addis Ababa in a time of 1:58.70 which also became a new national junior record.
A month later she erased the previous 15-year old 800m junior world record of 1:55.76 at the Hengelo Grand Prix meet and set a new junior mark of 1:57.18.
On June 1, 2008, she won the Berlin ISTAF Golden League race and replaced Mozambique¡¯s Maria Mutola¡¯s time of 1:55.19 with her own time of 1:54.99.
She continued on her winning streak with a victory at the Paris AF Golden League on July 18 when she scooped her fourth consecutive win in a time of 1:54.97.
The Beijing Olympic Games fell between the Golden League series and on August 18, 2008 Jelimo entered the history books by becoming the first Kenyan woman to win an Olympic gold medal after she stopped the clock at 1:54.87.
While the rest of the team members headed home, Jelimo flew to Europe to continue on her unbeaten
streak when she won the Weltklasse Golden League meeting in Zurich on August 29 in a time of 1:54.01.
She won her race at the Memorial van Damme competition in Brussels which was also the AF Golden League and bagged the Jackpot.
She returned to Kenya for the first time since the Olympic trials and received a hero¡¯s welcome accompanied by major festivities and even had a street named in her honour in her home town of Kapsabet.
And now pundits are asking; was Jelimo the Kenyan policewoman a one hit wonder girl?
Knowing that the Kenyan public is worried and concerned, Jelimo has appealed to them to show patience and give her time to gain her winning form.
¡°I know my performance of late has been below average. On the bright side it is however a wake-up call for me to work harder and gain my form and winning ways,¡± she appealed to the Kenyan public.
She disappointed many fans when she skipped the Kenya Police championships in Nairobi early this month in favor of the Oregon race where she humiliated herself by becoming last.
