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Ottey a pariah as Jamaican sprinters stage relay mutiny
and Steven Downes SYDNEY, Sept 18 (AFP) - Merlene Ottey is being ostracised by Jamaican team-mates at the Olympic village, her coach Srdjan Djordjevic told AFP Monday when quizzed about reports that her fellow sprinters would boycott the track and field relays if the veteran is included in the individual 100m team. Forty-year-old veteran Ottey had threatened not to participate in the relays if not picked for the individual. But now it appears that there will be no Jamaican relay presence at all if reports that Ottey will run in place of Peta-Gaye Dowdie in the individual event prove true. Asked about reports of a relay boycott by his charge's team-mates Djordjevic, who also coaches the national team of his homeland Slovenia, told AFP: "I think it is a problem with the (qualification) rules. They (the team-mates) do not understand how the rules are implemented properly." And he lifted the lid on the silent treatment Ottey, dubbed the 'Lion Queen', is receiving from her team-mates. "Merlene is staying at the village," said Djordjevic. "It's not very pleasant for her. She has survived other things before and she can survive this." Ottey, whose failure to win an Olympic gold medal is the one omission of a glittering career that began in the Moscow Olympics in 1980, did not qualify via the trials, finishing only fourth after her build-up had been hampered by a ban for testing positive for nandrolone. That ban was subsequently lifted, a decision criticised by Lamine Diack, the president of the International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF). But Jamaican qualifying rules provided a loophole for the athlete known as 'the Lion Queen' and on Sunday a leading Jamaican official had said that Ottey would run in the individual event in place of Dowdie. "The criteria are that the runners who filled the first three places of the trial should turn up at the Olympics in the same shape that they were in at the trials," the official told AFP. "Unfortunately Gaye-Dowdie went back to summer school in America and apparently did not train at all. "My understanding is that Merlene will run instead of Gaye-Dowdie although of course the official announcement will be made on the 20th." The athlete herself would only say: "The team hasn't been decided yet. I have to wait a couple more days. I can't say anything more until then." But the ill-feeling towards Ottey was evident on Sunday as she trained alone with seven other team members watching her from a distance.
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