It seems to be impossible to tell a story of  Merlene Ottey's sports career in brief, but here's what I'll anyway try to do for those of you who know little or nothing about her (while not knowing Merlene Ottey and who she is seems completely unbelievable to me!). I'll try to do my best to tell you all the most relevant facts - regarding the records full, rich sports career of "our" Merlene.

It couldn't be more brief, believe me! Since I'm fully aware that after having read this page out, you will want to know more and more about one of the greatest female athlete of all times and most certainly the best female sprinter ever, I am going to do my best to make this tribute pages as rich as possible, filled with any kind of information that might be of your interest.

Besides the facts written below there is a short article on Merlene's beginnings here fo a start and under "Achievements". And take my advice: follow all the hyperlinks.

Very briefly: Merlene Ottey is without any doubt  the most successful female athlete of all times in the World - there is no other athlete in the history of Track & Field with so many medals from various competitions of highest rank (Olympics, World Championships) - and it is hard to believe any athlete will ever "beat" her many records and "records"!

I can see you wonder how many medals has Merlene won in her over 20 years lasting career that hadn't even ended? Again - very briefly: 46 of them is in her collection - she participated on any Olympic Games since 1980 (Moscow) and she is probably going to end her Olympic career at the next year's Olympics in Athens 2004 - and if she does she will represent her new homeland: Slovenia, since she became a Citizen of Slovenia in May 2002 and has already represented our country at some major Championships - like World Indoor Championship in Birmingham 2003 for instance!

Merlene has so far won: 8 Olympic medals (no other female athlete has more Olympic medals), 14 medals at World Outdoor Championships (no other athlete, neither female nor male in the history of Track & Field has more medals) and 6 medals at  - World Indoor Championship - a total of 28 medals at the highest level world Competitions, and besides that she had  twice been a World Outdoor Champion at 200 m distance.

Did you think these are all her medals? Wrong! Merlene, namely won many medals at some other Competitions of the highest rank like: Caribbean Championships, Central American & Caribbean Championships, Commonwealth games, Pan-American Games, ...  -  her collection of medals thus counts (together with Junior Championships) a total of 46 medals - 35 of them she took as a senior athlete, other 11 as a junior! You can check this list here.

Merlene was the first woman ever to run 60 m faster than in 7 seconds and was the first woman ever to run 200 m indoors faster than 22 seconds and this result 21.87 still makes her an actual World record holder - for well over 20 years!!!

She is also the only female athlete to have run 67 races at 100 m distance faster than 11 seconds and in 15-times at 200 m faster than 22 seconds.

She still holds the record of being the female athlete to have run the fastest double race in one single day (at both 100 and 200 m distances - the results: 10.90 and 21.77) - she did it at GP Meeting in Monaco on August  07.1993.