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 Stalked by rivals and reporters, Jones still sets pace in 200 meter event
Friday, September 29, 2000 By Lori Shontz, Post-Gazette Sports Writer
SYDNEY, Australia -- Marion Jones still smiled. She still waved at the crowd. And as further proof that she won't let anything that happens off the track -- not even a drug test scandal involving her husband, shotputter C.J. Hunter -- bother her while she is on it, Jones still dominated.
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She won the 200 meters yesterday in a season-best 21.84 seconds, beating the Olympic field by the largest margin since Wilma Rudolph made history in Rome 40 years ago and becoming the seventh woman to double in the Olympic 100 and 200 meters.
From the second she walked onto the track for the final, Jones looked as if she had never seen a headline labeling Hunter, who is accused of failing four drug tests over the summer, a "drug cheat." Athletes talk so much about their need to focus that the phrase has become a cliche, but Jones' performance is elevating the act to an art.
"None of us just started training this year," she said. "This is a dream that's been in my mind for lots of years. To let one event in your life, as dramatic as it may be, ruin that wouldn't be worth it at all.
"All those years my mother drove me four or five hours to a track. All those days my brother picked me for his hide-and-go-seek team. To let one event ruin it ... no way. No way."
Jones lost her smile afterward when she was asked the inevitable question: Does she believe the scandal involving her husband is making people wonder if she is using performance-enhancing drugs, too?
But she never lost her poise.
"I don't have that fear," she said. "The people that know me, the people that support me, the people that train with me know I'm a clean athlete. I don't think that at all. No."
Overall, Jones was less jubilant than after her 100-meter victory but still excited.
She was seated at the post-race news conference next to silver medalist Pauline Davis-Thompson, 34, of the Bahamas, who ran a personal best 22.27, .43 seconds behind Jones, and finally won an individual medal in her fifth Olympic Games. She had apparently saved up a lot of good stories in case she ever got to enjoy the spotlight.
Barely pausing for breath, Davis-Thompson riffed on a variety of topics, from her first meeting with friend and 400-meter gold medalist Cathy Freeman, an Aborigine -- "I asked her, 'What color are you anyway?' and she started laughing" -- to her first sports bra -- red, and very ugly, so she was glad when someone bought her a blue one.
By the time she got around to crediting people who had put up with her over all the years, Jones had stopped trying to hide her smile. And when Davis-Thompson said, needlessly, "I am a very outspoken person," Jones showed that she has the same impeccable timing off the track as she does on it.
"Nooo," Jones drawled, making everyone crammed into the room, including Davis-Thompson, laugh.
With two such personable women at the podium, the routine questions about Jones' quest for five gold medals got more unpredictable answers.
The long jump was once considered Jones' chanciest event, but that distinction now belongs to the relays because of a rash of injuries, most notably hamstring injuries to Inger Miller and Gail Devers, and less-than-spectacular performances from the healthy runners.
Jones continues to insist that she isn't worrying about anything except her next event (that's the long jump) and that when the time for the relay finals arrives, her American teammates will produce.
Davis-Thompson, a member of the 400-meter relay team that won last year's world title, begged to differ.
"We had three finalists in the 100 meters," she said. "And the Bahamas is very small. ... We have 275,000 people, and to have three finalists in the 100 meters says something about our country. We're going to step out Saturday night and run our hearts out for the 275,000 people, and Marion, we're going to give you a hell of a run."
Then Davis-Thompson expanded her pride in the Bahamas speech to include the entire Caribbean, and she turned again to Jones. "I know you have a little Caribbean in you, Marion. It's almost like you're one of us."
This time Jones, whose mother is from Belize, laughed, making it look again as though she is enjoying herself despite the distractions.
"This is so much better than the dream," Jones said. "I've had so many nights when I could not get to sleep because I was dreaming about this. ... It is so, so much better to have [the medal] around your neck."
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