A leap too far for Jones

When the red flag went up on that monstrous last jump, Marion Jones turned her head away with a grimace of frustration. That was it. No more drive for five.

Back at the other end of the runway, Susen Tiedtke bent to say something into Jackie Edwards's ear. "I'm glad this was won by a real long jumper," the German said to the Bahamian. And Edwards nodded her head.

"It was nothing personal," Edwards said later. They had missed their chance of challenging for the medals, almost certainly the last of their careers - Edwards is 29, Tiedtke 31 - but they were pleased to see the gold go to Heike Drechsler and the silver to Fiona May, both thoroughbred long jumpers.

Nothing personal. Just a question of pride. Neither of them wanted to see Marion Jones, already the gold medal winner in 100 and 200 metres and a sprinter by profession, come in and reduce their event to just another one of five gold medals mopped up in a quest for immortality.

"I was hoping Marion would jump far so that it would be a good competition," Tiedtke said. "But that last jump was very far, and I was hoping the red flag was coming. It came, and I was very happy for Heike."

Jones's lack of long jump technique - "She only has her speed," Tiedtke said - made the task of beating her a point of pride among the specialists.

"I like her," Edwards said. "We have the same manager. And I want everyone to do their best. But what happened out there made us look a little bit better, those of us who actually train specifically for the event. It's good to see a long jumper win."

Drechsler settled the contest when she registered 6.99m with her third jump, 7cm ahead of the distance achieved by both May and Jones. May took the silver because her next-best jump - in fact all her other five jumps - were better than Jones's second legitimate effort.

So Jones's dream of equalling Paavo Nurmi's feat of five athletics gold medals 76 years ago was thwarted by a 35-year-old jumper who won her first world championship in 1983, as a product of the old East German athlete factory, won her first Olympic gold in 1992 as a representative of the unified Germany, and yesterday became the only woman to win the Olympic long jump twice.

To set Marion Jones's story next to Heike Drechsler's biography would be to compare JK Rowling with Graham Greene. Drechsler's odyssey began with the drug chemists of Dresden and the Stasi, a twilight world exposed to scrutiny when it was turned upside down by the end of the communist regime. Now Dreschler lives happily in Karlsruhe with her partner, a former decathlete, and their 10-year-old son, who is starting to get interested in athletics.

After winning silver in Seoul and gold in Barcelona, a knee injury cost her the chance to defend her title in Atlanta. And last spring her prospects in Sydney were threatened by a torn muscle.

"This year was not so easy for me," she said at the post-race press conference. "And when I got up this morning I was a little bit afraid, because the sun was so hot and the wind was so strong. But when I got to the stadium it was not so bad. Still, it was a very difficult competition. It's great for me to win a gold medal again. I know I'm not so young any more and it will be more difficult from year to year. And I know this will be my last Olympics."

For the Slough-born May, who represented Britain in Seoul before transferring to Italy in time to win her first silver medal in Atlanta, another silver seemed a mixed blessing. Four years ago she was beaten by a Nigerian who had returned only weeks earlier from a doping suspension. This result, she said, felt better because it came from "a very clean competition".

Greatest jumper

Deprived of the chance to become the first woman to win five track and field medals at a singles games, the 24-year-old Jones was faced with using the two relay finals to try to equal Fanny Blankers-Koen's 1948 mark of four gold medals on the track, a record for a woman athlete. In truth the original ambition never seemed entirely within her grasp, particularly after the news of husband's positive drug test broke last Monday.

Invited to describe her disappointment, the American nodded to the woman sitting on her right, and said a rather wonderful thing. "One day," she said, looking at Drechsler, "I'll be able to tell my grandchildren that I competed against one of the greatest jumpers in history."

And yet the competitor in her came away feeling the gold had been there for the taking. "I was a bit disappointed. The gold was mine but I didn't really do what was necessary to bring home the win. Heike deserved it. She competed like a true champion and you have to applaud her for that."

She had put everything into that sixth and last leap. What would it have measured, someone asked her, had she not trodden on the foul line? "I don't know. I'm not even going to think about it because then I might not get any sleep. But I put it out there. I was really aggressive down the runway and that's perhaps why I had so many fouls. You can never be too aggressive, I don't think. I went for it. You're never going to be able to call me timid. I went flying down that runway and I was just a bit over, that's all."

There is a poster of Jones on the walls of Sydney's railway stations, advertising the brand of running shoes she endorses. "Make them doubt" is the slogan under her picture. She made us doubt, all right. Or at least the news about her husband did. Inevitably, to be a female athlete married to a shot putter who has recently tested positive for nandrolone is to face accusations of guilt by association.

"A lot of other athletes probably would have been broken down by it," her coach Trevor Graham said afterwards. "But she held her head high and she kept doing everything we'd planned for. She didn't cancel anything. She just kept moving on. And if she comes out of here with four gold medals, what would you think of that? Four gold, it's been a great Olympics."

Sometimes fate has a way of adjusting mortal desires. This may have been one of those times. And, as often happens, an apparent failure allowed Jones to display the sort of humility in the face of her calling that might have been overwhelmed by the winning of five gold medals.

"I left it all out there on the track," she concluded. "That's what you're supposed to do. And I can look myself in the mirror tonight."