Jones, Greene Feeling Very Dashing Now

I still feel sorry for those Angelenos who left the city 16 years ago during the 1984 Summer Olympics, fearing the increased traffic, smog, threat of terrorism, pigeons masquerading as doves of peace flying overhead, whatever. They missed two of the best weeks in Los Angeles of the last two decades.

But the impact of the Olympics on Southern California did not end with the closing ceremony.

As I’ve written before, they are the gift that keeps on giving.

In visits to Sydney as a member of the International Olympic Committee’s coordination committee, Anita DeFrantz, an IOC vice president from Los Angeles, warns that lives there will be disrupted because of the Summer Olympics. Not every day between Sept. 15-Oct. 1 is going to feel like a “g’day” to the Aussies.

“But the point I try to make to them is that they are going to be benefited in many important ways, some of them that they can’t even imagine now,” she said Saturday.

One example (or perhaps two examples):

A little more than a week ago, I saw a 10-year-old photograph in The Times of Venus and Serena Williams wearing Amateur Athletic Foundation T-shirts. The picture was taken in their hometown of Compton during a session of the Junior Tennis League, which provided them with their first professional coaching.

The league was partially funded by Los Angeles’ Amateur Athletic Foundation, which was created with a $95-million endowment from the surplus of the 1984 Summer Olympics. With a mission of “serving youth through sports,” DeFrantz, the foundation president, said, the AAF has spread more than $100 million throughout Southern California.

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Another example:

Marion Jones was destined for greatness. According to a new book by Chicago Sun-Times sports columnist Ron Rapoport, “See How She Runs: Marion Jones and the Making of a Champion,” her family recognized that when she was a mere 5 years old and asked about the red carpet rolled out for Prince Charles and Diana Spencer during the royal wedding.

“They roll it out for very important people,” her mother told her.

“When I go places, why don’t they roll it out for me?” Jones asked.

In the summer of 1984, she discovered the route she would take. She was 8, the Summer Olympics were about to start in Los Angeles, and her family drove to Palmdale to see the torch relay.

Jones went to her room that night and wrote on her blackboard, “I want to be an Olympic champion.”

“That story,” DeFrantz said, “gives me chills.”

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Jones, 24, is not an Olympic champion yet. But she is about 11 seconds closer after the women’s 100-meter final in the U.S. Olympic track and field trials Saturday at Cal State Sacramento’s Hornet Field.

Her winning time, 10.88 seconds, didn’t even rank among her own top 15. Considering that she was running into a particularly stiff wind, though, it was impressive. More so that she won by .17 of a second over runner-up Inger Miller, the second greatest margin of victory in the women’s 100 at the Olympic trials in the automatic timing era.

The greatest was Florence Griffith Joyner’s .20-second victory over Evelyn Ashford 12 years ago in Indianapolis.

That’s fitting, because Jones has dominated the trials like no other athlete since Griffith Joyner in 1988. The difference is that FloJo actually had to run fast to become the story of that meet.

Did she ever run fast. Her world-record 10.49 in the 100 meters (which now has something of an asterisk beside it in the record books because of questions about whether the wind gauge was functioning) has not been approached.

All Jones had to do here was arrive.

Her goal of becoming the first woman to win five gold medals in a single Olympics--she’s eyeing the 100, 200, long jump and 400- and 1,600-meter relays--has turned her into the queen of all media.

The mere act of qualifying for the U.S. team in those events seemed like a foregone conclusion.

Not to her, she said.

She has proved she is vulnerable in the long jump, struggling Friday to qualify fifth in a 12-woman field for today’s final, and then tossing and turning until 4 a.m. because of anxiety over Saturday’s semifinal and final in the 100.

Thus, the huge smile when she crossed the finish line first in the final, followed by tears.

She was on her way to her first Olympics, having rejected a chance to go to Barcelona as a 16-year-old junior at Thousand Oaks High in 1992 because she was only a relay alternate and having been injured four years ago.

“Crossing the finish line, I couldn’t have known how emotional I was going to be,” she said Saturday. “It was a culmination of a lot of years, a quest I’ve been dreaming about for a number of years.

“I want to experience the Olympic spirit that everyone talks about. I talked to Jackie [Joyner-Kersee] about it, and she said it’s unlike anything you’ve ever felt.”

Someone asked her about today’s long jump final.

She laughed.

“Can I just enjoy this for a couple of hours?” she said.

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Randy Harvey can be reached at his e-mail address: randy.harvey@latimes.com.