Bronze Medallist Jenny Meadows Wants Gender Row Athlete to Keep Gold

Jenny Meadows, Britain's 800 metres bronze medallist, wants the girl in the middle of the gender controversy to keep her world championships gold medal, even though her possible disqualification would upgrade the Wigan middle-distance runner to second in the world and a silver medal.

Meadows became Britain's third medallist of the week on Wednesday evening in the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, following golds from Jessica Ennis and Phillips Idowu, and was just three hundredths of a second behind second-placed Janeth Jepkosgei from Kenya, but trailed a long way behind South Africa's Caster Semenya who now faces a gender verification process by the IAAF to determine whether her birth certificate is correct in declaring her female. The 18-year-old will be subjected to tests from a gynaecologist, a psychologist, a geneticist and a endrocrinologist, a matter which neither Meadows nor her husband and coach, Trevor Painter, takes lightly.

"I feel very sorry for her," admitted Meadows last night. "If she's legitimate she should never have been put through this, especially as it's being all played out in the world's media. It's a very dehumanising situation for her." Painter backed this view up. "It's a no-win situation for her," he said. "If she fails the test her career's over, and if she passes, then she's just had a horrendous experience when she should be enjoying her success."

If Semenya is stripped of her world title Meadows will leapfrog up to second in the world but Meadows is not that keen about the idea. "I suppose if Caster is disqualified I'd take the silver, but it's definitely not the way I would have wanted to have won it," she explained. "Also, I would not have received the silver on the medals podium in the stadium in front of 70,000, but in the post later, which is not what you dream of when winning medals. And finally, it would mean that I was three hundredths of a second away from being the world champion and winning a gold medal, and that would be very frustrating. I'd beat myself up because I timed my kick a fraction late and, half a metre past the finish line, I was in second place.

"So, for humane reasons, I really hope Caster keeps her gold medal and is allowed to continue to run. I'd heard some speculation about her before the race but just focussed on myself and making the top three no matter who I was racing against. She ran really well in the final but it's not as if her time was the best ever. Plenty of athletes have bettered Caster's time in the final so it's not the case that she holds a massive advantage over the rest of us at all. What she did is achievable, although she appeared very comfortable and will be the one to look out for if she's allowed to continue. By my reckoning a world record is well within her grasp in the near future."

All of which may seem like bad news for the 28-year-old, but the bronze medal has changed everything for the girl labelled "The Pocket Rocket."

"My self-esteem has not been high, and that's been a big problem for me," Meadows admitted. "I saw myself as little Jenny Meadows who always makes the semi-finals and then gets knocked out. Now I can say that I'm a global medallist and over the next few years I have to make winning medals a habit. I spoke to (double Olympic gold medallist middle-distance runner) Kelly Holmes before the world championships and she told me that at times she won medals when her body was in no shape to do so, but she knew how to win medals. Now I'm beginning to know what she means.

"I've never won a major individual medal in my whole junior and senior career until now. I'm disappointed I didn't quite do enough to take silver, but it's all very positive and there's plenty of work to do now to see if I can improve in the run-up to the London Olympics in 2012. I've overcome my demons. "

Which is just as well because her bronze medal means that she will now gain a monthly income from the National Lottery, having given up her job to give athletics a full-time go. Failure in Berlin could have spelt the end of any realistic chance of future success.

"Two years ago I gave up my job as the Head Athletics Coach at Manchester City Council," Meadows said. "It meant that I trained at six in the morning before driving an hour to work, doing a full day, then training in the evening. I'd spend most of my time run down and exhausted. Even though I couldn't afford to stop working financially, I also couldn't afford to carry on career-wise. For the past two years my status as an athlete at the level I was at meant I received just some living expenses which were minimal. Now this should change as a result of the bronze medal. Without it I would have had to started work again, and that would have ruled out any realistic chance of winning a medal in London. I would have remained the perennial semi-finalist. Now I want to kick on and win more medals."