Feeling the heat

Marion Jones splits from tainted coach

On Wednesday night Marion Jones dumped Charlie Francis as her coach. This came after several weeks of incessant pressure from media and international track officials that she distance herself from the man who once admitted to running Ben Johnson's steroid program and who, as recently as 2000, gave interviews in which he maintained that elite-level sprinting was impossible without performance-enhancing drugs.

In an interview with Helene Elliott of the Los Angeles Times, Jones called Francis, "the No. 1 technician in the world" and said that he "never once" suggested that she use drugs. Jones also expressed anger that she wasn't allowed to work with Francis because of such a public outcry. "I didn't feel at the time it would be a problem," she told the Times.

Jones' training partner and boyfriend, men's 100-meter world-record holder Tim Montgomery, has yet to disclose whether he will continue to train with Francis. To this point, the pair had been a package deal, since leaving Trevor Graham last December.

The entire episode is instructive in one important way: It tells us more about the state of track and field -- and, by extension, other strength/power/endurance sports such as swimming, cycling and weightlifting -- than it does about Jones or Montgomery or Francis. (Although I think it tells us some things about them, too.)

On the surface, here's the evidence that convicted Jones in the court of public opinion:

1. Francis taught Johnson to use steroids, admitted it, and then kept talking about drugs for more than a decade. He is a gifted coach, also, but that fact long has been washed away.

2. Jones runs very fast and was once married to a shot-putter, C.J. Hunter, who was nailed for doping two months before the Sydney Olympics (though the result was not made public until the middle of the Games).

No Francis-trained athlete since Johnson has returned a positive test. Jones herself has never tested positive. So, in a vacuum, it's a pretty thin case.

But this is not a vacuum. Track and field is an international, Olympic sport for which years of suspicion and just enough positive tests have created an air of guilty-until-proven-innocent. In the track world, insiders -- media, officials and long-time fans -- suspect everybody of using illegal substances to abet performances. These observers would like to believe otherwise, but they are inclined toward suspicion.

An athlete who wants to be thought of as clean must take extraordinary steps to prove it. British distance runner Paula Radcliffe has asked that her blood samples be frozen for testing in later years, when tests become more sophisticated. U.S. shot-putter/discus thrower John Godina once asked me if Sports Illustrated would pay to test him every day for a year, just to prove he was clean. Then we'd have a scoop, he surmised.

When an athlete improves quickly, there is suspicion. When an athlete becomes, as a coach once said to me, "bigger and faster at the same time," there is suspicion. Pimples and excessive facial hair mean steroids. An outsized jawbone means human growth hormone (which you can now buy, in synthetic form, over the counter). It's a vicious cycle, and nobody I know enjoys being part of it.

Which brings us back to Mrs. Jones. When she says that she didn't feel working with Francis would be a problem, she can't be serious. Jones is one of the coolest, smartest athletes I've ever met. She's also the most prominent woman in her sport. She had to know that working with Francis would raise many red flags. She just had to.

Jones told the Times that she didn't fully understand the ramifications, because she was only 12 years old when Johnson was busted in Seoul. This is a woman who has said she can recall watching the '84 Olympics in her hometown of Los Angeles and deciding then that she wanted to be an Olympian. This is a woman who has said she can recall Florence Griffith Joyner's gold-medal runs ... from 1988.

Jones says she left Graham because she had stopped improving. Actually, this is true. However, several sources told me this week that Jones and Montgomery had looked at several coaches before settling on Francis. If they in fact did, had the pair really wanted to avoid the heat, they would have picked one of those coaches. After all, this is track and field.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Tim Layden is a regular contributor to SI.com. Click here to send him a question or comment.

 

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