Jones Broke Speed Limit at 3-A Track Preliminaries

Elliott Mason, the personal coach of Thousand Oaks High junior Marion Jones, will discuss at length most aspects of his protege. However, one topic he refuses to talk about is her speed in the sprints.

Questions about how fast Jones can run have increased since she ran a wind-aided 11.22 seconds in the 100 and a 22.67 in the 200 in the Southern Section 3-A Division track and field preliminaries at Trabuco Hills High on Saturday. Her time in the 200 is a national high school and junior (age 19 and under) record.

“Her potential is unlimited,” Mason said. “We don’t talk limits whatsoever. That wouldn’t be good for her. As far as I’m concerned, she has no limits.”

Of course, every athlete ultimately has limits. But Jones, 16, doesn’t appear to have come close to reaching hers.

She steadily has improved since running 12.01 in the 100 and 24.46 in the 200 as an eighth-grader at Pinecrest Junior High in Sherman Oaks in 1989.

As a freshman at Rio Mesa, she ran 11.62 in the 100 and 23.70 in the 200, winning a state title in each event. She successfully defended her state titles as a sophomore, and lowered her times to 11.17 (in the state meet) and 22.76 (in The Athletics Congress championships).

She transferred to Thousand Oaks in November and had run only 11.44 in the 100 and 23.43 in the 200 this season before Saturday. But that was by design.

“The (Olympic) trials are where I want to peak this year,” Jones said. “I haven’t felt any pressure to run faster than I have. I haven’t had anyone come up to me and say, ‘Oh, my gosh, your times are so slow compared to what you ran last season.’ ”

“If anyone did that, they obviously wouldn’t know what they were talking about. Everything is on track for me to run fast at the trials.”

The trials are scheduled for June 19-28 in New Orleans. The top three finishers in each event will qualify for the U.S. team that will compete in the Olympic Games in Barcelona later this summer.

Although Jones is considered a longshot to make the team, she does have a chance.

“(Her times are) coming down at the right time,” Thousand Oaks Coach Art Green said. “Saturday was a good start to the final part of the high school season, but ultimately, the Olympic trials are what she is shooting for.”

With that in mind, Jones concentrated on the 400 early in the season to improve her strength and endurance, and she continues to train through meets. The end of the dual-meet season also has proved beneficial because it has allowed her more time to train.

“We’re doing a little more speed work than before,” she said. “But I think the biggest difference last week was that I just had a few more days to train. I had a couple of real hard workouts last week, and I think that helped a lot.”

The conditions at Trabuco Hills on Saturday also were conducive to fast sprint times.

Jones was aided by a wind of 2.35 meters-per-second in the 100, which exceeds the allowable of 2.00 for record purposes. Although the wind decreased for the 200, it was still a healthy 1.76 meters-per-second.

“I knew the 200 was fast,” said Jones, who set the previous national best of 22.76. “But I wasn’t sure about the wind. The flags looked pretty still to me when I was coming down the stretch, just like they did in the 100.”

Said Green: “She just ran a great race. She made up the stagger on everyone before she came off the curve and she was running against some decent people.”

Jones’ margins of victory (more than a second in the 100 and nearly three seconds in the 200) in the prelims would seem to indicate that she can run faster if pushed.

Mason will not say how much faster, but Jones says: “I think I can run at least 22.50 in the 200 and, hopefully, under 11.00 in the 100.”