Marion is passe now

The ending was so sudden on the crowded back curve, so unexpectedly futile, that it seemed only fitting to Marion Jones after the year she h...

The ending was so sudden on the crowded back curve, so unexpectedly futile, that it seemed only fitting to Marion Jones after the year she has had.

There were no proud proclamations of multiple medal success for Jones leading up to these Olympic Games, no marketing blitz. Instead, she gave declarations of her innocence amid a doping investigation while she struggled in her return from giving birth.

And yet she thought she could reclaim her old self. Less than an hour after digging herself out of the long-jump pit and waving resignedly to the crowd in farewell after a fifth-place finish, Jones looked to the 400-meter meter relay for one last chance for redemption. But Lauryn Williams, the silver medalist in the 100 meters, waiting for the baton from Jones for the third leg of the relay, did not notice Jones’ decelerating stride, slowed from the fatigue of six long jumps. After shouting to Williams to wait, Jones desperately shook the baton like a tomahawk, flailing to find Williams’ right hand.

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By the time Williams took the handoff, it was too late; she was out of the legal 20-meter handoff zone, and she stopped immediately, holding the baton.

Jones was left holding nothing.

Never had she imagined her Olympics would be this bad. “It exceeded my wildest dreams,” she said, “in a negative sense.”

Jones hugged a stricken Williams on the long walk around the track, and the other runners on the relay team soon joined in while the winners of the event — Jamaica — crossed the finish line jubilantly.

After the long jump final, Jones had less than an hour to join her teammates in the call room to warm up for the relay.

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The US relay team, with Angela Williams running the first leg and LaTasha Colander anchoring, had run two races that missed the world record (41.37) by three-hundredths of a second. They had never missed a handoff in practice, said Sue Humphrey, the coach, and they had talked all week of breaking a world record.

Lauryn Williams and Jones marked off with white tape where they were supposed to take off from in the handoff zone and where they, ideally, should transfer the baton. Jones said that she was a little tired after taking six pressure-filled jumps. She visibly slowed in the final 20 meters of her relay leg.

(The New York Times)