INTERNATIONAL champion distance runner Lynn Jennings was reported as describing her performance as ''inexplicable''.
The 18-year-old Chinese girl, Wang Junxia, had wiped her off the track in the 10,000 metres at the World Championships in Stuttgart at the weekend.
Wang, meanwhile, already was occupied with higher matters. ''I want to be the first woman to run under 30 minutes,'' she said, after recording the fourth fastest time ever of 30 minutes 49.30 seconds, for the 10,000 metres race at the championships.
Fighting words, and ones to be expected at this highest level of competition. But think again. How often have Asian female sports stars been quoted in that context. As fierce competitors, at the muscle-crunching end of sport in events like distance running, rowing or sprint swimming? Pre-Barcelona Olympics, it would have been very unusual. Chinese women, or any Asian sportswomen generally, were never seen to be competitors against the powerhouse performers of Eastern Europe or the glamorous speed stars of American field and track.
Until then, a certain set of stereotypes for sporting achievement for women prevailed. We liked our sports stars to be lissome victors.
Whirling themselves about parallel bars, piercing the diving pool with barely a ripple after a spectacular series of somersaults or showing well-proportioned but champion-bred legs in badminton or volleyball.