Jones Returns to Starting Blocks

If the lilt in her step can match the one in her voice, Marion Jones has reason to look forward to the first race of her comeback tonight in the Verizon Millrose Games.

“I’m the new kid on the block,” she said in a conference call this week with reporters from her home in Raleigh, N.C. “You haven’t seen me in a year and a half.”

In fact, it has been almost 17 months since she last competed, in September 2002, before taking last year off because of circumstances related to the arrival of the real new kid on the block. She and fellow sprinter Tim Montgomery became parents to Tim Jr. in June.

But Jones, 28, said the time off felt like forever to her. So, instead of making her customary season debut outdoors at the Mt. San Antonio College Relays in Walnut, she scheduled a rare indoor campaign, starting with a 60-meter race in her first appearance at Madison Square Garden.

Having returned to training less than four weeks after the baby was born, she said she told her new coach, Dan Pfaff, late last year, “I need a competition. I’m going to pull my hair out.”

Aware that her first race back would attract worldwide attention, she said that she also was eager to put the “hype of my return” behind her.

She also seemed ready, if not so eager, to face the inevitable questions about performance-enhancing drugs that she averted last year because of her absence.

Skip Stolley, the Millrose event director, assured that the issue would remain current by withdrawing an invitation to Chryste Gaines, No. 2 in the world in the 100 in 2003, to run the 60. He said he was unsure of her eligibility after it was revealed she tested positive last summer for a stimulant, modafinil.

The sport’s world governing body sent a letter this week to her agent, Renaldo Nehemiah, saying that she was eligible. But the lanes were by then filled.

Stolley blamed officials for not clarifying the situation sooner.

“If a lane came open today, the first thing I’d do is call Chryste to fill it,” Stolley said Thursday.

Nehemiah said in a telephone interview that Stolley’s motives were “entrepreneurial,” suggesting that the director feared Gaines’ participation would attract negative publicity.

“But Miss Marion Jones was invited to the grand jury as well,” he said. “Obviously, they wanted to talk to her about something. He [Stolley] didn’t seem to be concerned about that.”

Jones and Montgomery were among several track and field athletes who testified in San Francisco late last year before a federal grand jury investigating BALCO, a nutritional supplement company in Burlingame, Calif., that has been accused of supplying THG, a new designer anabolic steroid. Victor Conte, who owns the lab, has denied the allegation.

Jones said she has had “a conversation or two” in the past with Conte but added that she has never taken THG or any substance from BALCO, including a zinc-magnesium supplement called ZMA. She has been identified on a website about BALCO products as a member of the ZMA track club. She said that has never been the case.

“As you know, everything you read, you don’t believe,” she said.

As fast as she is, she has not been able to escape innuendoes, starting when she was in high school in Thousand Oaks and failed to appear for a random drug test. Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., arguing that she never received notification of the test, got her suspension lifted in an appeal to the sport’s national governing body.

Jones has neither tested positive for illegal drugs nor been publicly accused of using them. But she was married to shotputter C.J. Hunter, who tested positive for a steroid in 2000. Conte delivered a defense of Hunter during a news conference in Sydney, Australia, that was attended by Jones. She also trained briefly in 2002 and early 2003 under Charlie Francis, who was Ben Johnson’s coach.

“I don’t believe in guilt by association in the least,” she said. “The people who have followed my career from the time I was 7 years old until now see my steady progress and see the kind of person and athlete that I am. But people are going to make their own opinions. I can’t control that.”

At a Wednesday news conference here, Stolley wouldn’t permit drug questions to Jones after the first several because, he said, they would detract from the meet.

But he said neither Jones nor anyone associated with her asked him to shield her.

“I’m impressed by her transparency through the whole thing,” he said. “She admitted that if she had to do some things over again, she would have.”

Jones said she and Montgomery left former coach Trevor Graham for Francis because they needed more technical training, not realizing that their association with Johnson’s former coach would become so controversial. When it did, they left. They eventually settled on Pfaff, also known as a technician.

She said she was eager to see whether his work with her has improved her start in the sprints. Tonight’s 60 should be a good test.

“Zero to 30 has never been the strong part of my race,” she said.

But she is more excited about his work with her in the long jump. She has not jumped in competition since her third-place finish in the 2000 Sydney Olympics. She has two long jump competitions planned indoors this winter, in Birmingham, England, and Athens.

She acknowledged that her style in the event previously was “unorthodox.”

Now, she said, “when you see me jump, you won’t have to cover your eyes.”

As for the remainder of the year, she wouldn’t commit to how many events she wants to enter in the Summer Olympics in August in Athens.

“I’d like to do seven events in Athens,” she said, joking. “I can see the headlines now: Marion Jones to Do 7 Events in Athens.”

But it was clear from the conversation that she would like to try five again.

She will compete in the Olympic trials at Sacramento in July in the 100, 200 and long jump. Her place on the 400-meter relay team could be determined by her performances at the trials in the sprints. She said she would like to run a time in the 400 at Mt. SAC in April, as she did in 2000, that would earn her consideration for the 1,600-meter relay. She won three gold medals, a silver and a bronze in Sydney.

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THE FACTS

Millrose Games

at Madison Square Garden tonight

* TV: Ch. 4, Saturday, noon-1:30 p.m. PST (delayed)

* Main event: Marion Jones returns from a long layoff to face Torri Edwards, Inger Miller and Allyson Felix in the 60 meters.