It was an 800-metre bridge across the generation gap. Pamela Jelimo, a teenage rookie competing to cheer up her mother, and Maria Mutola, a veteran of six Olympic Games and old enough to be that mother, effectively exchanged a baton in a dramatic victory for youth over experience.

Jelimo may not be getting the publicity of Usain Bolt and Liu Xiang, but she is the new sensation of these Games. She is 18, was still a sprinter only last year and now has an Olympic gold medal, a world junior record and a place in the all-time top ten. She stepped up to middle-distance running this year only on the advice of Janeth Jepkosgei, her Kenyan compatriot, who, given that she finished second yesterday, may be regretting her sagacity. With her victory, Jelimo became the first Kenyan woman to win an athletics gold medal at an Olympic Games.

Mutola tried to keep pace, but she was struggling by the back straight on the second lap. Jelimo was disappearing at that point, having overtaken Jepkosgei at the bell, and Mutola came home in fifth place, three seconds behind and 17 years ahead.

Jelimo's time was 1min 54.87sec, faster than Mutola's best, but the Mozambique runner's record of six successive Olympics is a triumph of longevity in the 800metres. Her apotheosis came in Sydney when she fended off Kelly Holmes before the tables were reversed four years later. Could she make London? “Oh man, I'll be nearly 40.” Instead, she will retire after these Olympics, a wonderful career and an indelible story behind her.

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Jelimo, though, will surely be there in 2012 and may well be moving effortlessly towards legendary status by then. She is doing all this for her widowed mother, Rodah Jeptoo Keter, who wanted to be an athlete, but was dissuaded by the prejudice that existed a generation ago.

“They told her, 'Don't go out, they will kidnap you,' there was no motivation for sports,” Jelimo said. “I want to go where my mother could not reach.”

The way she is going Jelimo will soon threaten Jarmila Kratochvilova's world record, set six years before her birth. However, despite her age, she is a veteran by the standards set by Mutola. A talented football player in Mozambique, who had to fight against her parents' disdain for sport, she lived in a township on the edge of Maputo with nine siblings and no running water. It was only when she was introduced to athletics, when she met Mozambique's greatest poet and sometime football coach, José Craveirinha, that her life veered off a predictable course. Craveirinha introduced Mutola to his son, who was a track coach, and she went to the Olympic Games in Seoul aged 15. The following year Jelimo was born.

Then came Mutola's big break, her “poet-father” arranged a scholarship for her in the United States. Her record after yesterday's effort is a trio of fifth places, her gold from Sydney and a bronze from Atlanta.

Often termed incomparable, Mutola left the Olympic stage as if having hung on just long enough for someone who can fill her cavernous shoes.