COMMENTARY

By Steve Wilstein

AP columnist

updated 11:29 a.m. ET Aug. 28, 2004

ATHENS, Greece - The night epitomized the year.

Everything that could go wrong did, in ways Marion Jones never imagined.

The long jump was a flop — two fouls, four leaden leaps and a fifth-place finish. The 400-meter relay an hour later was a disaster, her botched handoff of the baton to Lauryn Williams ending the U.S. team’s bid halfway through the race.

“It was a rough one,” Jones said, tears streaming down her cheeks as she summed up an abbreviated Olympic experience so different from the Sydney Games where she won three golds and two bronzes.

“It exceeded my wildest dreams in a negative sense.”

She linked hands in commiseration with her crushed relay teammates.

Jones, the oldest and most decorated Olympian of the four, tried generously to take the burden off the 20-year-old Williams, who acknowledged she made the crucial mistake of running too soon before grabbing the baton.

Angela Williams had given the Americans — the fastest team in the world this year — a strong start, and Jones, running second, extended the lead off the turn. But then came the handoff that doomed the team.

“I just couldn’t get it to Laurie,” Jones said. “I said, ‘Wait, wait, hold up, hold up, stop, wait.”’

But Lauryn Williams didn’t wait and couldn’t stop. Twice Jones reached out with the baton, twice Williams grabbed air trying to take it. By the time she grasped it, she was beyond the 20-meter passing zone — an automatic disqualification.

Jones wasn’t to blame and offered no excuses. The coaches, she said, prepared the team well. The same runners, in the same order, had the fastest time in the semifinals.

“This is the way the sport goes,” she said. “It’s unfortunate for us, fortunate for the three other teams (Jamaica, Russia and France) that had a medal. We came in here as a team. We’re going to head out of here with our heads up, knowing we did the best we could today.

“I go home now and regroup and get ready for next year.”

She spoke of preparing for the next Olympics in Beijing, but so much remains uncertain about her future. The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency continues to probe her link to the BALCO steroids scandal in San Francisco.

Jones, who has never tested positive for drugs, never been charged and never backed off her claims of innocence, surely won a vote of confidence from her teammates. They risked losing any medal they might have won if Jones was later found guilty.

“She’s a warrior and I want you all to know that,” said LaTasha Colander, the final relay runner who never got a chance to carry the baton. “You all have been on her from the beginning to the end. The USA team is going to stick with her, and we did a great job out there. In the Olympics, it’s not always the win. It’s the struggle, it’s the journey to get there. And this journey has been very tough for her. And the USA team is with her. We’ll be back.”

Jones may try to come back but she is unlikely to be the force she was at Sydney. At 28, with a 1-year-old son, it’s tough to keep up the rigorous training demanded of a sprinter and a long jumper. She qualified only for the long jump this year — she won a bronze in the event four years ago — failed to make the 100-meter team and dropped out of the 200 trials, citing fatigue.

“She doesn’t seem to have the same aura as she used to,” said Australian Bronwyn Thompson, who finished fourth in the long jump, just ahead of Jones and behind the three Russians who swept the medals.

“She doesn’t exude the same sort of confidence as she used to,” she said. “It probably has to do with where her head was at because of the controversy surrounding her. I think it was very difficult for her to get her head in the right place tonight.”

Rather than her old fearlessness, a kind of cocky charm, Jones wore a worried, vulnerable look most of the night. She smiled and waved to the crowd in a melancholy way after her last long jump, as if that might well be the last jump of her life.

Yet Jones has proved herself a willful woman. She defied history and challenged her limits in going for five golds in Sydney. She stared down the anti-doping agency and dared it to come up with the goods on her or back off.

That ploy bought her time and a trip to Athens.

The questions now are whether she’s running out of time, whether she will again ever run free of suspicion or, indeed, run at all.

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