Stardom Is Long Overdue

Marion Jones made the front page of the New York Times on Sunday.

What took her so long?

Those of us in Southern California who followed her through her teen years can hardly be surprised by her success. She is no more remarkable now than she was as an Oxnard Rio Mesa ninth grader who dunked a tennis ball, as a 10th grader who ran the fastest 100-meter time ever by a high school girl or, after transferring to Thousand Oaks, as an 11th grader who earned an invitation to run on a U.S. relay team in the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, although she declined because she wanted to slow down a little.

Now, it seems as if everyone has discovered what we knew long ago, that she is the successor to Jackie Joyner-Kersee as her sport’s--probably her planet’s--greatest female athlete.

Jones, 22, would have been anointed sooner if she hadn’t, like Joyner-Kersee before her at UCLA, detoured to play college basketball, starting at point guard as a freshman in 1994 on North Carolina’s NCAA championship team.

Fortunately for a sport like track and field that is constantly on a star search, she was no basketball Jones. Even though she could have pursued a professional career through the WNBA or ABL, she left the sport with a year of eligibility remaining to concentrate on sprinting and long jumping.

That was 15 months ago, but it took only about the first three of them to reestablish herself as a phenom. Before the end of last summer, she had run the world’s fastest times in the 100 and 200, won the world championship in the 100 and taken the U.S. long jump title from Joyner-Kersee.

This summer, she became the first woman in 50 years to win the 100, 200 and long jump at the U.S. outdoor championships and has the world’s best eight performances in the 100, the best two in the 200 and two of the best three in the long jump.

The Goodwill Games’ 100 on Sunday night before a crowd of 9,136 at the Nassau County Mitchel Athletic Complex figured to be as stiff a test as Jones will face this year, even after two-time Olympic champion Gail Devers withdrew because of a foot injury.

Still in the field were the reigning 200-meter world champion, Ukraine’s Zhanna Pintusevich; a former 200-meter world champion, Jamaica’s Merlene Ottey, and Jones’ immediate predecessor as the U.S. 200-meter champion, Inger Miller of Pasadena. It was the first time in history that all eight women in a 100 race had previously broken 11 seconds.

But although Jones professes respect for her competitors, the only sprinter she is chasing is one who hasn’t competed in 10 years.

It has been that long since Florence Griffith Joyner set her amazing world records in the 100 and 200.

While it now seems apparent that Jones is capable of surpassing Griffith Joyner’s best of 21.34 seconds in the 200, most within the sport believe her 100 record of 10.49 is safe for decades to come.

Jones isn’t among them.

“What I don’t understand is the attitude of the other sprinters,” she said earlier this year. “They look at Flo-Jo’s record and say, ‘We can never do that, we can never reach it.’ In my opinion, that’s the reason the women’s sprints have made no progress in the last 10 years. The way I see that, if you put records out of reach, you’ll never beat them.

“I’m lucky to be born with this body and this mentality. So many athletes have one or the other. I think I’ve got the talent, and I know I’ve got the goals.

“I want to go down in history as the fastest woman who’s ever been on Earth. So is it better for me to set my goal at 10.76 or 10.48? That’s motivation.”

Trevor Graham, a Jamaican Olympian who coaches her in Raleigh, N.C., said he believes she eventually will own world records in the 100, 200 and long jump but will be satisfied in these still early stages of her development if she breaks 10.70 in the 100. She ran 10.71 in May, the fifth-fastest time ever behind Griffith Joyner’s four fastest.

Jones’ time on Sunday night was 10.90, her second slowest in nine races at the distance this year, but still considerably faster than the second-place Pintusevich’s 11.09 and more respectable than it looks on paper considering the 0.8 meters per second headwind.

“It wasn’t that bad a race into the wind,” she said. “Obviously, it wasn’t the fastest time in the world compared to some of my past races. I wish the time could have been a little faster.

“But when you run against Ottey, Pintusevich, [Chryste] Gaines and Miller and pull a victory out, you have to be happy with that.”

In fact, Jones did not come to the Goodwill Games seeking great times, or even victories really, but for her coronation. Joyner-Kersee, who is retiring after a meet Saturday in her current hometown of St. Louis, begins competition here Tuesday in her last heptathlon.

Jones wouldn’t go to Barcelona in 1992 to run a relay, but this baton she gladly will accept from Joyner-Kersee.

“It’s very special for me to be here,” Jones said. “In my heart, she’s still the greatest female athlete who ever lived. If I can achieve a quarter as much as she’s achieved, I’ll be a very happy woman.”

But when a reporter mentioned her goal of winning four gold medals at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia, she was quick to correct him.

“Five,” she said, counting her three individual events and both relays. No woman has ever achieved that in the Olympics.

The queen is retiring. Long live the queen.