Marion Jones is aiming for five golds in the 2000 Olympics. Duncan Mackay reports on an athletics phenomenon
When Florence Griffith Joyner set world records for the 100m and 200m a decade ago experts predicted they were so far ahead of their time that they would stand for 50 years. But the emergence of Marion Jones means they may not even see their 10th anniversary.
The 22-year-old American is the new queen of track and field. In Rome two weeks ago Jones won the 100m in 10,75 seconds, accelerating smoothly away as a Ferrari, and then destroyed the best long-jump field of the year with a leap of 7,23m. She has the six fastest times of the year, including a 10,71 at Chengdu, China, in May, and it looks only a matter of time before world records start falling to her.
Jones is 5m ahead of her closest rival. In sprinting terms that is a mile. Provided she steers clear of injury no one, it seems, can stop her becoming the biggest star of the 2000 Olympics. The Sydney organisers have already constructed the time-table around her ambitions.
No track-and-field athlete, man or woman, has ever won five gold medals in one Olympics. Jones wants five at Sydney – in the 100 and 200, the long jump and the 4×100 and 4×400 relays – and is working her way towards that unprecedented feat.
“My ultimate goal is to be the greatest female athlete who has ever competed and I want to win five gold medals in Sydney,” Jones says. Her coach, Trevor Graham, cannot wait to see what she will eventually accomplish. “She’s got a lot of talent,” he says. “She’s not even close to her peak yet.” With no global championships this winter, the competitive focal point for Jones is the Goodwill Games in New York, which has already begun. Griffith Joyner’s records of 10,49 for the 100 and 21,34 for the 200 and the world record of 7,52 for the long, set by Russia’s Galina Chistyakova, also in 1988, could all come under threat in the right conditions.
`The last several years a lot of people put Florence’s records out of reach,” Jones says. “We look at them differently. I’m 22 years old and in only my second year at this level. Before my career is over I will attempt to run faster than any woman has ever run and jump farther than any woman has ever jumped.”
Jones has already accomplished what few have in a career: she has pumped new life into track and field in the United States, where interest has been lagging.
Last year, in her first full season on the circuit, she won the 100 and long jump at the US Championships. She was also the only woman to win two golds at the World Championships in Athens last year, in the 100 and 4×100. At the end of the season she was named Female Athlete of the Year by the International Amateur Athletic Federation.
“She’s making the sport right now,” says Zundra Feagin-Alexander, the runner-up to Jones in the 200 at this year’s national championships. “She’s stepped into the void that people like Flo Jo left. She’s showing the other women you can be great. She’s an inspiration.”
Feagin-Alexander also compared Jones to Wilma Rudolph, the 1960 Olympic gold medallist in the 100, 200 and 4×100. “She reminds you of a modern-day Wilma,” Feagin- Alexander says. “So tall (1,77m) with that great stride.”
Jones is also being compared to Flo Jo’s sister-in-law, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, the world record-holder in the heptathlon, the American record-holder in the long jump, a three-times Olympic gold medallist, three- times world champion and America’s most popular sportswoman.
“I don’t deserve the title of best women’s track-and-field athlete right now,” says Jones. “I still consider Jackie the best female athlete and probably always will.”
Joyner-Kersee, however, is getting ready to pass her crown to Jones. “I don’t know what she can’t do,” she says. “She’s gifted and she’s mentally tough. She can own everything from the 400 on down, plus the long jump.”
Jones has time on her side. She also has a deep reserve of natural talent to draw upon, talent she has been tapping with serious training for only 16 months. In her high-school days in Thousand Oaks, California, Jones was the fastest girl in the world.
At 16 she ran the 100 in 11,14 and the 200 in 22,58. She turned down a place as a reserve in the US Olympic 4×100 relay squad in 1992. “When people see my gold medals I want to be able to say I ran for them,” Jones says.
But then her sporting ambitions went off track. At college she used her speed on the basketball court, helping the University of North Carolina win an NCAA title in 1994 by scoring 1E716 points. Only since March 1997 has she been in serious training as a senior track athlete.
“I loved track and wanted to keep it like that,” says Jones. “So many young runners get burned out. I figured I’d do both but in the beginning I needed discipline. I knew I’d come back to track.”
In the world of track and field, where every great performance is greeted with suspicion and innuendo, there have been few whispers about Jones’s methods, despite her startling progress.
Mike Powell, the world record-holder for the long jump, believes Jones’s spell as a basketball player may have helped her develop in track and field, just as it did Joyner-Kersee when she was a teenager.
“Both were basketball players, so both bring a different athleticism to the sport,” he says. “They’re not just fast, they’re not just jumpers but they’re athletes. Jackie was heavier [67kg to Jones’s 63] because she was doing the heptathlon. Marion is faster and that’s what will take her there into the record books.”
But there is a skeleton in Jones’s cupboard. When she was 15 she faced suspension after missing an out-of- competition drugs test. Technically, missing a test is the same as failing one, and she could have been banned for four years.
Jones claimed she had never received notification of the test and hired Johnny Cochran (the lawyer who later helped OJ Simpson win his murder trial) to defend her. She was cleared and has since completed more than 100 drug tests without any problem.
There has also been controversy about Jones’s private life. She is engaged to the American shot putter CJ Hunter, a divorced 29-year-old father of two who was declared bankrupt five years ago.
He was a track coach at North Carolina when Jones was a student there and was forced to resign as relationships between teacher and pupil are banned. “When you try to keep two people apart, what happens?” asked Hunter. “They get closer.”
Hunter has taken the role of protector for Jones. He set her up with Graham as her coach and Charlie Wells as her agent. Hunter and Jones are never seen apart on the European Grand Prix circuit except when competing.
Like Linford Christie, Jones has always used anger as a driving force. “I was not surprised by her performances last year,” says her mother, Marion Toler. “She was angry at people, at her basketball coaches, at her school, probably at me. She has always put critical articles in her scrapbook to motivate herself and she excels in situations like this. There was a lot more at work last year than fast-twitch fibres.”
Jones and Hunter should never be short of money. Jones is already the highest-paid female athlete in history, receiving $40 000 per appearance and with a shoe contract with Nike worth an annual $500 000.
She hopes success in the Golden League, where any athlete who remains undefeated throughout the six meetings plus the final, will receive a share in a $1-million prize pool, will help set her up for life.
“It’s a lot of money. If they want to give away the million dollars, I’m not going to throw it away,” she says. “There is no added pressure on me. Every time I start I pressure myself to run faster. That’s what motivates me.”