Marion Jones caught a glimpse of herself as she made her final turn, a small glimpse of a gigantic image on the stadium’s jumbo screen that was tracking her every movement. She was surprised at what she saw.
After six days, five events, an international scandal involving her husband and the weight of enormous expectation bearing down, Jones saw nothing but a lengthening lead in the third leg of the women’s 4×400 relay and probably would have stopped to stare if she had been able.
“I thought when I hit that straightaway, these legs were going to say, `No more, Marion, no more,'” she said.
That they did not and, quite the contrary, literally carried her team to the gold medal, should be the story of one of the wilder days in Olympic track and field. But when all were tallied, only three of Jones’ record five medals were gold, the other two bronze. Considering her bold and very candid goal of five golds, Jones had to acknowledge disappointment.
“I enjoyed my relay teammates and my individual events,” Jones said. “But I still feel in my heart I had a chance to win that long jump and we could have done it today in the 4×100.”
After winning the gold in the 100-meter and 200-meter finals, Jones fouled on her final long jump attempt to end up with the bronze Friday night. She removed any chance of second-guessing that effort after a clumsy performance by her 4×100 relay team resulted in a third-place finish behind the Bahamas and Jamaica, respectively, earlier Saturday night, before a shining performance in her final event.
The 4×100 had to be particularly disheartening because the race was winnable if not for clumsy exchanges of the baton, including the last one from Nanceen Perry to Jones in which Perry appeared to grab Jones’ arm as the two passed.
Injuries to Inger Miller and Gail Devers, who would have been in the relay, as well as a lack of practice time together, was blamed for breaking the U.S. streak of four straight gold medals in the 4×100.
The second-place Jamaicans celebrated the eighth Olympic medal (three silvers and five bronzes) for Merlene Ottey, 40, competing in her sixth Olympics.
Meanwhile, the Bahamas team, three-fourths of whom train in the United States, positively exulted in its gold medal and that a tiny Caribbean nation of just 275,000 defeated the Americans.
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“That’s about 100,000 for every million Americans,” crowed the outspoken Pauline Davis-Thompson. “We’ve gotten no respect from the U.S., no respect from the world. Now we should.”
Perhaps, but not just yet.
“They beat us, but they didn’t beat our `A’ team,” said Chryste Gaines, who ran the first leg. “We put a `B’ team out there and we still got on the podium.”
Jones’ performance in her leg of the 4×400–only the second time she has run the event after competing in it her sophomore year at North Carolina–was nothing short of remarkable. Her split of :49.4 equaled that of Olympic 400-meter champion Cathy Freeman and quite simply won the race.
The assumption about the Games is that for most Americans, anyway, the lingering image will be of Jones, who may have walked away short of her goal but still leaves Sydney as the most decorated woman in a single Olympics.