| | Associated Press
SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Five gold medals in one Olympic Games?
Impossible?
|  | | Marion Jones hopes to become the first woman to ever win five golds in one Olympics. |
Not for Marion Jones.
The Superwoman of track and field has said for two years she
wants five.
Skeptics questioned her.
She's too young, they said.
No woman has ever won five, so why does she think she can? She
went for four at last year's World Championships and wound up with
one. Florence Griffith Joyner tried for four at the Olympics and
got three.
She can't long jump consistently.
The schedule is too tough.
Forget all those negatives. Jones is on target, at least for
now, for five.
She survived a strenuous U.S. Olympic trials by winning the 100
and 200 meters and long jump, giving her three spots on the U.S.
team. In addition, she will run the 400 and 1,600 relays at Sydney.
At 5-foot-10 and a solid 140 pounds, Jones is big enough and
strong enough to survive at the Olympics, where the temperature is
not expected to be as hot as the 90-degree days in Sacramento. She
also is smart enough and cool enough to shrug off Olympic pressure.
At Sydney, the only extra running she will be required to do
will be one more round each in the 100 and 200, plus the 400 and
1,600 relay finals. The relays were not contested at the trials.
The way she competed at the trials, she appears to be a
certainty to win the 100 and 200. Nobody in the world has run
faster than her in those events this year, and only FloJo ran
faster than Jones' career bests.
In the relays, she probably will run the anchor legs, and again
her speed is unquestioned.
Only in the long jump is there uncertainty.
Her fluctuation is that event is so wild that she could win or
not even make the final.
"I've always been the first one to say that going for the five
events is not going to be easy," she said Sunday, the final day of
the trials at Sacramento State's Hornet Stadium. "It's going to be
very hard.
"But I don't even want to think about accomplishments here. I
want to run faster and jump higher."
Between now and the Olympics, Jones will be the major focus of
the games, much more so than Michael Johnson and Maurice Greene,
the world's two best men's sprinters who dominated the trials with
their trash-talking before both came up lame in the 200 final.
If healthy, Johnson and Greene will be competing in only two
events, one individual and one relay
"When we originally considered doing this, we weren't thinking
about history," Jones said of her quest for five.
History will be made, though, if she accomplishes her goal.
Only one women's track athlete -- Fanny Blankers-Koen of the
Netherlands in 1948 -- has won as many as four gold medals in one
Olympics.
Should Jones surpass Blankers-Koen, she would reach sport's
highest pedestal.
The executive director of USA Track & Field, Craig Masback, has
said Jones has a chance to join Pele, Muhammad Ali and Michael
Jordan as international athletes who completely transcend their
sports.
If Jones wins five, she also would surpass the totals of the
entire U.S. women's teams at the 1992 and 1996 Olympics. Eight
years ago, the women's team won three golds; four years ago it won
four.
The best the women ever have done is seven golds in 1984, when
the Soviet Union and most of its allies boycotted the Los Angeles
Games. There is a good possibility to equal or pass that total this
year.
In addition to Jones and the relays, the top contenders include
world record-holder Stacy Dragila in the pole vault; 2000 world
leader Gail Devers in the 100 hurdles; world record-holder and 1996
silver medalist Kim Batten, 1996 bronze medalist and No. 2 all-time
Tonja Buford-Bailey and 2000 world leader Sandra Glover in the 400
hurdles; 5,000-meter American record-holder Regina Jacobs in that
event and the 1,500, if she chooses to run both; and Inger Miller,
the 200 world champion, in the 100 and 200 against Jones.
The U.S. men might be hard-pressed to exceed their 10 gold
medals of 1996, the most since 1968, especially with neither
Johnson nor Greene in the 200.
If Greene recuperates, he should win the 100, in which he is the
world record-holder and two-time world champion.
Johnson, the world record-holder and Olympic gold medalist in
the 400, also will be a prohibitive favorite in that event, and the
Americans will be favored in both relays, as long as they don't
drop the baton in the 400, which they have been prone to do.
Other gold medal possibilities are defending Olympic champion
Allen Johnson and silver medalist Mark Crear in the 110 hurdles;
1996 champion Charles Austin in the high jump; 70-foot shot putters
Adam Nelson, C.J. Hunter -- Jones' husband -- and Andy Bloom; 2000
world leader Angelo Taylor in the 400 hurdles; world champion
Anthony Washington in the discus; 1996 silver medalist Lance Deal
in the hammer throw; and 200 trials champion John Capel.
Dragila set the only world record at the trials (15 feet, 2¼
inches). Five American records also were set -- Dragila; Devers
(12.33 seconds); Jacobs in the 5,000 (14:45.35); Lynda Blutreich in
the women's javelin (191-2); and Elizabeth Jackson in the women's
3,000 steeplechase, a non-Olympic event (9:57.20).
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