Her mood was upbeat, her voice animated and her conversation punctuated by frequent bursts of her laughter. The longest downer of Marion Jones’ athletic life was over.
The three D’s that hit her in succession over a year–doping by her husband, divorce, defeat–have begun to turn into small scars instead of open wounds.
She says she has moved on, and wants to leave no doubt she was the best in her sport. Three Olympic gold medals and four world titles provide a pretty good base on which to build a reputation of unmatched dimensions.
At 26, Jones has been the world’s best female sprinter since she became a full-time track athlete in 1997. Her first sprint race of this season, a 100 meters at Sunday’s Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, Ore., is to be the start of what she hopes will be a move into the next dimension.
“Look for the bomb I drop next week,” she said via telephone from her home in Apex, N.C.
That warning, not prompted by a particular question, was the way she ended an hour-long conversation over a wide range of subjects.
They included the breakup with husband of 2 1/2 years, C.J. Hunter; her increasingly close relationship with her mother’s homeland, Belize; her plans for another shot at five gold medals in the 2004 Olympics; and her conviction that she needs to break the seemingly untouchable world records in the 100 and 200 meters to assume an unrivaled place in the sport’s history.
From late September 2000, when her attempt to win five golds at the last Olympics became entangled in Hunter’s doping problems, to August 2001, when Ukraine’s Zhanna Pintusevich upset her in the world championship 100, Jones’ carefully plotted course ran into unexpected detours.
She separated from Hunter Feb. 20, 2001, announced it last June and filed for divorce three months ago, after the one-year period of living apart mandated by North Carolina law. She lost her first non-relay track race since 1997.
“I’ve always been the kind of person to deal with my emotions and my private life in private,” Jones said. “Looking back at it now, I think without a doubt [the separation] affected something in me which carried over to the track.”
Given her history the effect of a dissolving marriage must have been considerable. In a Tribune interview two years ago, Jones spoke longingly of the birth father who left her family when she was 2 and with whom she had tried to establish contact.
“You always want that perfect family,” Jones said then.
Last year Jones ran consistently slower than she had since 1997. Her victory in the 200 at the 2001 world meet was a triumph of will, of desire taking her where pure speed once had. Jones was slow–for her. She still was faster than anybody else, world champ at 200 for the first time.
The experience has made her less untouchable and, by implication, more human. Two years before the 2000 Olympics, she boldly announced her intention to win five gold medals in Sydney. That made Jones’ three golds seem like failure to some, even though her five overall medals (including two bronzes) are an Olympic record for a woman in track and field. “I set the bar,” Jones said, not seeking the comfort of a new spin on the results. “Once I was done in Sydney, I told everyone I was disappointed.
“When you break it down and say, `Three gold medals and two bronze,’ it has a little more impact than, `Five medals.’ So wherever I go, I always tell people to say three gold and two bronze instead of five medals.”
Jones laughed. But she is dead serious about trying to do it all over again at the 2004 Athens Olympics–100, 200, long jump, both relays.
“I can tell you right now that trying for three individual medals is the case,” Jones said, even though she plans to skip the long jump for a second straight season this year and pick it up again in 2003. “Of course, I’m going to be in the 100 and 200. I love the long jump. And then which relays will be determined closer to the Games.”
This season presents a different opportunity. It is the first since 1998 in which there is no major championship as Jones’ ultimate goal.
In 1998 she recorded personal bests in the 100 (10.65 seconds), 200 (21.62) and long jump (23 feet 113/4 inches) while winning 36 of 37 races or jumps.
“Trevor (Graham, her coach) and I are trying to mimic 1998, even if we won’t be in every single meet in every continent like then,” Jones said. “I feel that starting at Prefontaine, I’m going to run fast and that will propel me to have a season better than 1998.”
That means talk about breaking the world records of 10.49 for the 100 and 21.34 for the 200, both set by Florence Griffith-Joyner in 1988. Jones insists she needs to break them before leaving track and field, as she intends to do after the 2008 Olympics.
“I want the records,” Jones said. “I want to be the dominant athlete ever in the sport, and that is going to take world records.
“I think I’m still incredibly far [from being the best ever]. I need the world records. More gold medals. More dominating performances in major championships. I haven’t done [very well] in the long jump at a major championship.”
It is hard to imagine Jones being greater in Belize than she is already.
The Central American country of 200,000 inhabitants has made her its sporting ambassador, given her the key to Belize City, named the Marion Jones Sporting Complex for her and put a Marion Jones section on its official government Web site. In return she has started the Marion Jones Belize Foundation to help kids’ sports in the area. The $32,000 Jones won on “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” went to the foundation.
“I really have dreams and plans of moving back to Belize and raising the awareness of youth in sport there,” she said.
She speaks Creole, cooks Creole dishes–stewed chicken, rice and beans, plantains–and has visited Belize regularly since a first trip at 11.
Jones raised the world’s consciousness of Belize when she carried its flag along with a U.S. flag on her first victory lap in Sydney.
“I’ve been submerged in Belizean culture since I was born,” she said. “It didn’t just happen when I carried the Belizean flag, and a lot of people don’t realize that. Of course I am an American and proud of that, but my roots are in Belize.
“When I grabbed the flag from my family, I decided the world should know who I truly am.”
In her brief thank-you speech for the key to Belize City, Marion Jones included a sentence in Creole. That’s putting your mouth where your money is.
