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Timing as important as times for Jones
Posted: Friday July 24, 1998 06:25 PM
NEW YORK (Reuters)-- Timing, Marion Jones concedes, can be as important as times. Last year Jones made her debut on the international athletics circuit as Carl Lewis made his valedictory lap of the great European stadiums. This month she takes over from Jackie Joyner-Kersee as the leading woman track and field athlete in the United States when the twice Olympic heptathlon champion competes for the final time on Saturday. Then in September the 22-year-old American has the chance to become the first athlete to win a million dollar bonus if she is only athlete to win each of her events in the new Golden League series. Raw talent, an attractive personality and tough-minded ambition have made Jones a hot sporting and commercial property at a time when the sport in the United States desperately needs new heroes. She was quickly snapped up by Nike and has now joined a number of other elite athletes in a multi-million dollar advertising campaign launched by sports watch manufacturer Tag Heuer. "I just thank my parents I was born when I was," Jones said in an interview this week. "My goal is to be one of the greatest female athletes there has ever been in the sport and I know that's going to take more than a couple of world championships or maybe more than a couple of Olympics." Parallels with Lewis have been predictable. Although Jones confesses she is getting just a little tired of being constantly compared with the nine times Olympic champion. Lewis won gold medals over 100, 200, the 4x100 relay and the long jump at the 1984 Olympics. Jones aims to go one better at the 2000 Sydney Games, emulating 1988 double sprint champion Florence Griffith Joyner and running the 4x400 meter relay as well. Even the formidable Flo Jo, who blazed like a comet across the athletics sky 10 years ago before suddenly retiring, could not help the 4x400 team to more than a silver medal. Jones does not like the 400, but she has clocked the second fastest time in the United States this year and says she needs only run one in 2000 to convince the coaches she should be on the relay team. "I just wanted to open the eyes of the U.S. coaches, to show I'm available," she said. Griffith Joyner may not have anchored the American 4x400 team to gold but her 100 and 200 meters world records set in the summer of 1988 have not been seriously challenged until this year when Jones announced she had them both in her sights. Jones said she thought Galina Chistyakova's world record long jump, also set in 1988, would be the first to fall. "I have jumped 7.31, the world record is 7.52," she said. "If I get a good jump the world record is gone. It's difficult to say when the 100 and 200 records will fall, I'm hoping before my career is over. That will kind of be the pinnacle." Jones freely admits her long jump, based on pure speed and minimal technique, is not yet a thing of beauty. More surprisingly, she still sees a number of faults in her sprinting which will hardly lift her opponents' spirits. "There's a lot of things that need to be improved...the start can be improved I wouldn't say it's the worst part of my race," she said. Jones said she had not consciously thought of Lewis when she decided last February to aim for five gold medals at the millennium Olympics, although the prospect of going one better must have crossed her mind. Lewis was the first athlete to grasp the possibilities of the new professional era, although to his constant frustration he never achieved the recognition in the United States he felt was his due. "I don't think it was totally his fault," Jones said "He used to be the Michael Jordan of Europe, track and field is not as big in the United States. I would not put all the blame on Carl, he did all he could." Griffith Joyner, who transformed herself in the space of a year from perennial silver medallist to the fastest woman in the history of the sport, relied mainly on sheer power to set her world marks of 10.49 and 21.34 seconds. Jones is taller, slimmer and reminds older track observers of the supremely elegant Wilma Rudolph, 20th of 22 children, who overcame serious childhood illnesses to win the 100-200 double at the 1960 Rome Olympics. "Marion is not quite as tall," recalled former U.S. track coach Leroy Walker. ""But she has a lovely build, great stride length and unbelievably excellent leg speed. "They're both very good and very nice. Wilma lasted for a long time, Marion will also."
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