MARION JONES was the track and field star of the 2000 Olympic Games, winning five medals, three of them gold. The American will leave Athens empty-handed after a nightmare evening at the Olympic stadium, when she finished fifth in the long jump final and calamitously failed to hand the baton to Lauryn Williams, her United States team-mate, in the 4 x 100 metres relay, won by an ecstatic and amazed Jamaica quartet, while the US team looked on in disbelief.
There is an air of despondency about Jones these days, which is hardly surprising, given the leaks from Grand Jury investigations into the Balco lab that have fuelled an ongoing inquiry by the US Anti-Doping Agency, with Jones’s name, or rather her initials, constantly in the frame. That it is affecting her performance was never better illustrated.
Even so, there was still the semblance of a feeling before the long jump that she may muster a single leap of more than 7.10 metres or more (she has, after all, a personal best of 7.31) and win the title. But to do that, you need more than just ability; the fire needs to be burning it was not for Jones. The American looked slower than ever, did not go farther than her second leap of 6.85, and did not remotely threaten the Russians.
Tatyana Lebedeva won, making up for the disappointment of a bronze in the triple jump with a precious gold. She leapt 7.07, a mere two centimetres farther than Irina Simagina and Tatyana Kotova, her team-mates who were separated on countback, with the silver going to Simagina. Had Jade Johnson, of Great Britain, managed another six centimetres, she would have claimed the illustrious scalp of Jones, too. As it was, the 24-year-old still improved her personal best by a centimetre with her first leap of 6.74 and extended her personal best to 6.80 with her second. “There’s no point in jumping a PB and finishing seventh,” Johnson, who looked positively angry as she came off the track, said.
While the Russians swept up in the long jump, a Chinese was hoovering up in the 110 metres hurdles. Genuinely great hurdling moments do not come along too often. If you are lucky, you might have caught Renaldo Nehemiah on a going day, so smooth that his hurdling was once described as like a “whisper in your ear”. Or Colin Jackson, whose balanced action was quite balletic — never more so than in setting the world record in Stuttgart in 1993.
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Liu Xiang is in that category now. Forget the absence from the final of Allen Johnson, the 1996 Olympic champion, eliminated when he belted a hurdle and, for once, going down, too. Forget the injuries of Anier Garcia, the previous champion from Cuba. He came third in the final, but a fit Garcia would not have lived with this, either.
Liu flew down the straight, missed every hurdle by no more than a hair’s breadth and sped through the tape to equal Jackson’s world record of 12.91sec. It was magical.