Athletics: 50 years ago, world's fastest woman was an Asian

SINGAPORE - Summers pass and legends get left on the forgotten shelves of time. Fifty Junes ago at the Rose Festival in Portland, Oregon, an Asian woman took brilliant flight in front of the world's most celebrated astronaut. On a Saturday in 1970, Chi Cheng, the sprinter who first ran barefoot among the rice fields of Taiwan, exploded off the blocks in the 100 yards.An hour or so later she ran the 220 yards in 22.

"Those were really great days," Chi remembers."Heide Rosendahl the long jumper approached me and said you broke the world record and I jumped up and down in happiness and stepped on her foot with my spikes." In an hour-long video chat, Chi emerged as an energetic, charming storyteller wrapped in a smile and humility. The fastest woman, my god, how did it feel?"It didn't affect my life much," she said."It was nice to be honoured as the fastest woman in the world. But I was still very much Chi Cheng."

And so she went to America in 1963, following in gifted footsteps, for also in California was C.K. Yang, her inspiration and compatriot, who'd won Olympic decathlon silver in 1960, set the world record in April 1963 and was on the cover that year of Sports Illustrated under the headline: World's Best Athlete.

"I was told," she said,"that Western people and Europeans, the reason they are able to run faster and jump higher and further is because they ate a lot of beef. As an Asian, I loved pork and porridge. But this idea stayed in my mind when I went to the Olympics in Mexico City. It was the first time I had three meals a day which were all beef. This is how much I wanted to get a medal.

Only one Asian woman before her - Kinue Hitomi, 800m silver medallist in 1928 - had won an Olympic medal on the track and its value was significant to Chi. The medal released her, it made her even faster.

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