Jones' finale worst nightmare

The former champion finished fifth in the long jump.
By MIKE DEARMOND
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
ATHENS -- Of course it had to end this way for Marion Jones.
The one-time queen of American track and field finished fifth in the Olympic long jump.
And then she kept reaching, reaching, reaching to complete a relay handoff that wasn't completed until both she and Lauryn Williams were beyond the legal reaches of the baton transfer zone.
The gold-medal-cinch U.S. women's 4x100-meters relay squad never even crossed the finish line.
"When I woke up this morning this was not the way I figured the day would end," Jones said.
Fitting ending
Why not? Everything else about this summer of the 2004 Olympics had snapped like a hamstring under too much tension.
Were Marion Jones a V-8 hot rod, she wouldn't have just thrown a rod, she'd have thrown all eight. The turbocharger would have blown. She wouldn't have had a flat, she'd have had four.
First there was the BALCO smear. Father-of-their-child Tim Montgomery had already been threatened with a lifetime ban from the U.S. Anti-Drug Agency if its suspicions of his alleged performance-enhancing drug use proved out.
Jones, by association, was smeared as well.
She fought back.
"I can tell you this," said Jones during a national media summit in New York in May. "If I make the Olympic team, which I plan to do in Sacramento, and I'm held from the Olympic Games because of something that somebody thought, you can pretty much bet that there will be a lawsuit."
Never mind that there was perhaps evidence of another guilt by association. Jones' former husband was a convicted drug cheat in track and field, banned from the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney.
But Jones did walk the tight rope of public perception. And she staggered on it.
Long jump only event
Jones did make the U.S. Olympic team at those Sacramento trials. But not in the 100 meters. In fact, the only individual event Jones qualified for in the Games of Athens was the long jump.
She made the finals, and with determination on Friday night embarked on a medal mission.
She fouled on her first of six attempts, and again on her fifth. She sailed 6.85 meters on her second try, and couldn't do better.
Russians took over the medal stand. Tatyana Lebedva won the gold with a best jump of 7.07 meters. Irina Simagina won the silver at 7.05. Tatyana Kotova won the bronze at the same measure.
Jones, of course, came up short, but with her chin up. She wasn't the queen for no reason.
"I've never been one for giving excuses and I won't start now," she said. "It didn't happen for me today. I could sit here and say I had some fouls that I had that were long. But nobody cares about that.
"The Russians, they deserved to have swept. The rest of us, we didn't challenge 'em. And I am included in that bunch."
Still, when Marion Jones took the track for the final race, she was smiling, boosting the hopes of teammates Angela Williams, Lauryn Williams and LaTasha Colander.
Angela Williams jumped off to a solid start. The handoff to Jones was made, and Jones raced smoothly to the exchange with Lauryn Williams.
Left too early
Only Lauryn Williams seemed to take off impossibly early.
"I did leave too early," Williams said, still barely able to speak after a why-me experience on track's biggest stage.
"We went up there," Jones said. "We were pumped, we were excited. And it didn't happen.
"I didn't get it to her. I couldn't get it to her."
Jamaica won the gold medal, Russia the silver, France the bronze. None could have stayed with the Americans had the U.S. made the baton passes and crossed the finish line. But the baton never got to Colander. She never even had a chance to run that final leg.
Was it a matter of training? Had Jones and Williams simply not practiced the exchange enough?
"We did everything possible," Jones said. "It's probably the most I trained with a relay. I think the relay coaches did an excellent job this year of getting us all prepared.
"You guys might think that's a joke. But trust me. We came into this race, we were prepared."
As she started explaining all that, tears ran down the face of Marion Jones. She wiped them away and their replacements kept coming. For a long time.
By the end of Marion Jones' time before a mosh pit of sweating, straining media in the bowels of Olympic Stadium, she had composed herself.
A queen always does.
Will be back
Someone asked if she would quit about the same time someone asked her if she would try to run at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.
"No way, no way," Jones said, leaving the impression that there was no way she would quit.
Beijing? Well, that is four years off.
But having regained her composure, there was no way Marion Jones could avoid the way this Olympic summer had ended for her.
"It's exceeded my wildest dreams," she said, "in a negative sense."