Marion Jones is aiming for a record five gold medals in next year’s Sydney Olympics. And the world No 1’s ambition is no idle dream, reports Duncan Mackay
It is not enough that she has already been ordained the best female athlete of her generation. Or that she is the highest earning woman in athletics history, collecting millions of dollars each year. Marion Jones is determined to go where no track athlete, man or woman, has gone before – by winning five gold medals in an Olympic Games.
”My ultimate goal is to be the greatest female athlete who has ever competed,” she says. ”Five gold medals would help.”
The targets have long been set: 100m, 200m, long jump, 4x100m relay and 4x400m relay. With more than a year left before the Olympic flame is ignited in Sydney, the 23- year-old Jones is already dreaming the impossible dream.
”Five gold medals is not just talk,” the American says confidently. ”It’s possible. If any athlete can do it, it’s myself. I was born with a lot of talent but I’m also a hard worker. I love to be on top.”
Strikingly, five Olympic golds is such an immense challenge that no one has even dared attempt it before. Jesse Owens achieved four gold medals in Berlin in 1936, a feat matched by Fanny Blankers-Koen in London 12 years later and Carl Lewis at the boycotted Los Angeles Games of 1984. Florence Griffith-Joyner won three gold medals and a silver in 1988, while Michael Johnson, the star of Atlanta three years ago, picked up two.
”One thing I’ve learned about Marion Jones,” says Sylvia Hatchell, women’s basketball coach at the University of North Carolina, ”if she tells you that she’s going to do something, you can go ahead and put your money in the bank, because she’s going to do it.
”When she left our basketball team in March 1997, she told me she wanted to be the fastest woman in the world. And by the middle of June, she was.”
It is not just Jones who believes she will accomplish her goal. ”I think she’ll do everything she says she’s going to do,” says Michael Johnson. ”I think she’s that good.”
Jones won 35 of her 36 competitions in 1998, losing only in her final event of the year to German long jumper Heike Drechsler at the World Cup. Her bests in both the 100m and 200m made her the second fastest woman in world history, behind only Griffith-Joyner. A knee injury suffered in the middle of the year has made her less dominant in the long jump, suffering two defeats, but in the sprints she is as unbeatable as ever.
”There’s a big gap between Marion and the rest of us right now,” admits fellow US sprinter Chryste Gaines. ”And I don’t think Marion is going to be coming back to the pack any time soon.”
As a warm-up for Sydney, she will compete in four events at the world championships in Seville this month, potentially earning herself another $200 000 in prize money.
Jones seems to be able to do pretty much what she pleases when she steps on to a track, even though it is barely two years since she gave up basketball to concentrate on athletics full time.
”What sets me apart from some athletes is I love to run, love to sprint and train,” Jones says, without sounding arrogant. ”I’m the kind of person who has to stay active, or this thing’s going to get boring for me. Knowing that there’s something out there that’s never been achieved before, and I have a chance to go do it – that motivates me.
”Of course, I say that, and I’m making money and I have exposure. But that wouldn’t mean a thing if I didn’t enjoy what I was doing.”
Life is very good for Jones. The long- legged, lanky Jones – 1,75m, 63kg – flits from Zurich to Paris to Oslo in a bid to break records and feather her bank account. She pocketed more than $2-million last season through purses and endorsements; she won $750 000 in the last two meets alone.
In October, she married CJ Hunter, a world- class shot-putter, and moved into an exclusive neighbourhood outside Raleigh, North Carolina. Although she was a major player in collegiate basketball, Jones says her heart has always been in athletics. She started at the age of nine after watching Evelyn Ashford and Jackie Joyner-Kersee compete in the 1984 Olympics, just a few kilometres from her home in Thousand Oaks, California.
Four years later, after watching Griffith- Joyner run faster than any woman ever had, Jones wrote on her bedroom chalkboard: ”I want to be an Olympic champion.”
Before the 1992 Barcelona Games, as a high- school student, she turned down a spot as a reserve on the US 4x100m relay team.
”My mom, my coach and I sat down and figured that I’m 16 years old and the time just isn’t right,” Jones said at the time. ”Looking at the big picture, I just don’t want to rush things.”
So she took up a scholarship with North Carolina, competing in both athletics and basketball. ”She has so much confidence and athletic ability, she can intimidate people,” says Hatchell. ”I mean intimidate – people were afraid. If she was around, they were afraid to pass the ball because she’d steal it.”
Jones laughs at her former coach’s description of her. ”I’m a sore loser,” she says. ”I hate to lose at anything – Monopoly, Nintendo, track or basketball. That’s what keeps me going. Those mornings when I want to stay in bed, I say to myself, ‘What is Merlene Ottey or Gail Devers doing right now?’ While I’m lying there, my competition is out there getting better. That motivates me.”
Jones reminds herself of that when the wake-up alarm sounds at 6.30 each morning. ”I’d like to stay in the warm bed in the morning,” she says. ”But I hate losing.”
Jones might already have a couple of Olympic gold medals in her trophy cabinet had it not been for a broken foot which kept her out of the Atlanta Games. ”She would have had a huge impact then, in every area that she’s going to try and impact now,” says Deanne Vochatzer, the 1996 US women’s Olympic coach.
Instead, Jones watched the Games on TV. But the missed opportunity ate at her. After one more basketball season at North Carolina, she walked into Hatchell’s office and quit for the track. A legend was on her way.
Five months later she finished the season as the top-ranked sprinter in the world at both 100 and 200m. Last season she was ranked No 1 in the world in the long jump as well – becoming the first American to hold a No 1 world ranking in three events.
Jones never really knew the late Griffith- Joyner, whose records she is chasing. She owns an autographed picture and memories of a first impression.
”The first time I ever got a chance to watch her in 1988, my mouth dropped,” Jones says. ”The woman could be so fast, so graceful, so beautiful, all these great things, and she could still be whipping everybody’s butt at the same time.”
There were always drug rumours about Griffith-Joyner, even after her death last September. Jones knows such talk is likely to surface about her.
”If you run fast, there’s going to be discussion,” says Jones. ”There’s nothing you can do about it. We’ve got to be prepared for the cynicism, even though some people are just born with amazing ability that nobody can explain.”
Jones’s style is so distinctive that it can be spotted on any track, her torso as erect as a drill sergeant’s, a gold chain bounding from her neck, her thick thighs concealed under a conservative Lycra outfit and cycling shorts.
She is a world-class star at a time when America treats athletics as a second-class sport. Sometimes it is a welcome bonus because her privacy is unruffled. Sometimes she finds it disturbing, or confusing.
”We’re out there training on the track at North Carolina state, and there’s PE classes jogging by, everyday people jogging by,” Jones says.
Most have no idea of the supreme talent in their midst. ”When we go over to Europe it’s the complete opposite. We can go home to Raleigh and train in peace, in virtual anonymity, then step on a plane and, six or seven hours later, you’re a superstar.”
Outside of training, she and Hunter spend most of their time at home -cooking, reading, walking the dog, surfing the Internet and pigging out on chocolate chip ice cream. Asked if she ever gets bored, she says, ”Quite the opposite. I like the home life.”
If she could change one thing about herself, she says she would become more outgoing. ”I have problems introducing myself to other people.”
In Sydney, few doubt that Marion Jones will be introducing herself to the world and, perhaps, the history books.