Electronic Telegraph Saturday 30 September 2000 Sue Mott THIS was the slow boat to a broken dream. Marion Jones is used to her fate being decided in the lightning flash of explosive speed. But in the Olympic long jump final her destiny took nearly two hours of intrigue to unravel, and when it was over she was left clutching a bronze medal and shattered ambition, thwarted by one last act of Olympian endeavour from an all-time great. "I think the most positive thing I can take out of this experience," Jones said, "is that I can tell my grandchildren that I competed against one of the best long jumpers in history." Heike Drechsler, the 1992 Olympic gold medallist, who won her first world championship 17 years ago as a 19-year-old competing for the old East Germany, won this event with a leap 15 cm shorter than the one by which she triumphed eight years ago. An acknowledged former Stasi agent, accused of steroid intake during her sporting life behind the Berlin Wall, she can now be embraced as one of the most accomplished athletes united Germany has ever produced. "I don't feel like East or West," she said. "We are a team and I feel really good in this team." Well may she. Jones was chasing five gold medals. Drechsler, in her last Olympics at the age of 35, was chasing one last re-run of Olympic glory. But she hadn't counted on it. "I'm really lucky. I don't recognise me winning the gold medal. It's fantastic. I know I am not that young any more and when I was injured a week before the world championships in Seville last year, I really wanted to stop. But four weeks later, I looked at my spikes and said: 'Oh, I try again'. The Olympics give me great motivation. And to be standing in first place. I can't say what I feel, I have so much emotion." She spoke through genuine broad-beaming smiles as Jones leaned politely listening, her chin resting on her fist. The bridesmaid's bouquet is no use to this woman. "Fun is winning," Jones admitted. And winning is familiar to the fastest woman on the planet, but not this time. She was beaten by an expert and a delighted silver-medallist, the Slough-born Italian Fiona May. The long jump was always going to be the potential nemesis in Jones' attempt to outrun the four-gold-per-Games performances of her fellow-Americans, Jesse Owens and Carl Lewis. Only the Flying Finn, Paavo Nurmi, in 1924, succeeded in winning five golds in one Games. His record is safe. Now - with the two relay berths on the American teams awaiting her - she can only win four. Only . . . While Drechsler was an iron-nerved technician, Jones was a steel-willed sandbag. She may have soared down the runway like a Tornado jet but she landed, knees akimbo, like a sack. She only managed two legal jumps out of six altogether and on the final jump, with Drechsler already leading with her third leap of 6.99 metres, Jones, with a best jump of 6.92m, needed the conversion of sheer violent speed into distance to keep her ambitions alive. She bent double, fluttered her fingers as though tingling with handbrake-held energy, then poured down the runway, hitting the board and leaping - it appeared - on or beyond the seven-metre line. But she turned to see the immediate hoisting of the red flag. Her foot had been well over the board. Game over. "I knew on my last jump I'd got to lay it all on the line. I was very aggressive. Very fast, very fast. I took off well, but unfortunately saw the red flag. It kinda dashed my hopes." Those hopes had been pretty vaunting in fact. Jones talks about her own greatness as though it is a tangible asset, to be coined into titles and championships at will. But now she was having to talk about her own humility and disappointment, ironically reined back by a woman who was not the product of individual belief, but a system. Drechsler did not talk about her past under the Eastern Bloc regime, during which she was forced to become a Stasi informer and submit a written request to have a baby. Following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, she sued for libel the publishers of a book which documented her annual dose of steroids. She lost the libel case, was convicted of perjury and was forced to issue a public apology. "Of course, there were problems, but I feel comfortable with my life now," she would only say. Her son is now 11 and prefers football to long jump. She did not say it, but the implication was that he was gloriously free to choose. Perhaps Jones, a woman not untainted by drug problems herself in the 320lb shape of her tested-positive husband, had too much choice by contrast. Presented with the opportunity to go for a fistful of gold at these Olympics, a combination of her ego and evident sprint supremacy made her feel the need to try. Having failed, she admitted to the let-down. Clutching a small American flag and a fair imitation of defiance, she said: "I'm disappointed. That's the word to describe it, but I had a good shot at it. It just didn't pan out. I know people will say: 'I told you so', but I don't regret it. I'll be able to go home and look in the mirror." But, as someone pointed out, she could not now supersede the record of Carl Lewis. Now she could only emulate him. "Aw," she said, dismissing history summarily, "I don't care about Carl." Actually, there was a case for saying that he didn't care about her, either. On this day when his record was due to meet the challenge of the young woman they call Hard Nails, he elected to spend his time with the silver-medal winning American women's soccer team and walk the famously curved iron breadth of Sydney Harbour Bridge with them. There was a metaphor for an international athletic career. You can't stay at the summit forever. But Drechsler found she could resume the Olympian heights for one more powerful draught of glory, and perhaps all the sweeter for being free of totalitarian demands. And Jones found, as she admitted bravely, you can't win 'em all. Eamonn Condon WWW.RunnersGoal.com
