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Tired, but still the best Jones isn't at top of her game, but should still win 200
EDMONTON, Alberta -- Expect Marion Jones to win her first gold medal of the 2001 track and field world championships Friday night in the 200 meters at Commonwealth Stadium. Do not expect it to be easy, because Mrs. Jones' loss to Zhanna Pintusevich-Block in Monday night's 100 final was no accident. In simple terms, Jones is the greatest women's track and field athlete of her generation, but at this point, in this place, she is not at the top of her game. Thursday evening she cruised to victory in her semifinal heat in 22.40 seconds, running the turn and then another 50 meters hard before floating through the finish line. It looked easy, but it obviously was not, as Jones was cranking out a high pulse well after the finish. Long week, long year. "I've been fatigued in the evening," Jones said. "I take a hot bath, I take a cold bath." She was being charming in her typically disarming way, but she was also making a point: She's tired out. Cut her some slack. Still, the 200 final does not exactly boast a Track and Field Hall of Fame kind of field. There is no other runner with a personal best within half a second of Jones' 1998 21.62 scorcher. Marion's 22.23 is the fastest time in the world this year. The breakdown in form that made her look like a kid racing in the driveway in the 100 won't reoccur in the 200, where Jones can run more smoothly. She'll win, but she'll hurt doing it. Plus: Inger Miller, the only woman in the world who can challenge Jones in the deuce when both are at their best, won't even be in the final. She ran a plodding 22.82 in the semis and didn't make the cut. It was Miller who stepped in and ran a blistering 21.77 to win the 200 world title after Jones got hurt in Seville in 1999, and Miller remains convinced that even a healthy Jones would not have beaten her that night. Miller injured her hamstring just before the Sydney Olympics and had to pull out of the Games. She's still not back. "The Olympics were late, I got hurt late and I'm still trying to catch up," Miller said.
Johnson puts stamp on historyQuietly, Allen Johnson is carving out one of the best careers of any sprint hurdler in history. Thursday night he won his third world title (including 1995 and '97) by crushing Cuban Anier Garcia, the Olympic gold medalist, out of the blocks and hanging on with a desperate, professional lean at the tape. Johnson's victory puts him squarely alongside two-time Olympic gold medalists Lee Calhoun (1956 and '60) and Roger Kingdom (1984 and '88), three-time world champion Greg Foster (1983, '87 and '91), former world-record holder Renaldo Nehemiah -- all of the United States -- and current world-record holder Colin Jackson of Great Britain. Johnson, who is unfailingly polite, soft-spoken and completely disinclined to self-promotion, has now won three world titles and the '96 Olympics and finished fourth in Sydney, despite tendinitis in his right knee and a strained hamstring that hampered his training. "Allen Johnson comes up big in big races," said Johnson's coach, Curtis Frye. He is also a perfectionist. On Thursday night, his start was scary good, and he immediately had a yard on Garcia. But Garcia closed in the middle of the race and nearly got Johnson at the tape. "I gapped him just like that," Johnson said. "But then I must have made some mistakes, because he started coming on and I thought, Oh, s---." For Johnson, ever the perfectionist, it is not enough simply to win. "I had a good one going," he said to Frye outside the stadium. "Then I fell apart, didn't I?" Frye laughed and agreed with him. "He got a great start and then he got arrogant in the middle of the race and sat back a little bit," Frye said. Yet, he fully expects Johnson, who trains in Columbia, S.C., where Frye coaches at the University of South Carolina, to make a serious run at the world record before summer turns to fall.
Jennings is a legend in his own mindThe delusional quote of the day came from iconoclastic U.S. miler Gabe Jennings, who finished a distant and hopeless 11th in his 1,500-meter heat, running an embarrassingly slow 3:46.07, one heat after world-record holder Hicham El Guerrouj ran 3:36.97 to win his. "These eyes [pointing to his own eyes] can see I'm on the same plane as these other guys. I see fear in their eyes. I own El Guerrouj. In two years, I'll be whipping all these guys' asses." No. 1: Jennings desperately needs to stop trying to be quotable and start trying to fulfill the promise he showed a year ago. Nobody fears him. When they read what he is saying, they will pity him. No 2: He also said he's been training 20 miles a week while attending summer school at Stanford. If that's true, why didn't he relinquish his spot rather than run poorly and embarrass the uniform?
Fredericks is not impressedAmong the spectators watching Greece's Konstandinos Kederis follow his Olympic 200-meter gold medal with a world championship was Frank Fredericks, who won the '93 world title and finished second on three other occasions. Fredericks also ran a forgotten 19.68 deuce behind Michael Johnson's epic 19.32 in Atlanta. Kederis ran 20.04 to win the Edmonton title, but Fredericks was mild in his criticism. "I thought they would run under 20 seconds," he said. "But they ran three races in three days and that's hard to do. They're a different generation." Sports Illustrated senior writer Tim Layden covers track and field for the magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com.
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