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Dwight Stones ...
At the Reebok Grand Prix(6/3/06)
THE SHORT AND THE LONG OF IT!
The 2nd Annual Reebok Grand Prix at Icahn Stadium on Randall’s Island in New York could have been viewed as just another rainy, dreary spring stop on the Visa Championship Series in a 2006 season that doesn’t have any international championship carrot for U.S. athletes to shoot for.
However, there were a couple of significant performances that came out of the meet that are worth noting.
First of all, to the shock of many track & field fans, Marion Jones, she of the five Olympic medals at the 2000 Sydney Olympics and numerous World Championship titles, announced last Friday that she had asked for and been given a lane in the women’s 100 meter race. Just so you know, the field in the women’s 100 meters was not exactly devoid of luminaries. Veronica Campbell of Jamaica, the winner of three Olympic medals in Athens and the fastest woman so far in 2006 (10.99) had a lane. Torrie Edwards, who won gold and silver at the 2003 World Championships had a lane. Four-time NCAA sprint champion Angela Williams had a lane, as did NCAA champion and Athens 4 x 100 relay gold medalist Aleen Bailey of Jamaica.
None of that pedigree deterred Jones, or for that matter, Lauryn Williams, the Olympic silver medal winner and reigning World Champion in the event – although she’s been battling a virus and asthma flare-ups this spring.
Jones’ reason for jumping into this fire was that she felt as though she needed a truly competitive race as part of her preparations for the outdoor national meet later this month in Indianapolis.
Let’s get you caught-up a little bit here. Aside from Jones’ well-known athletic credentials, she has made news over the past few years in areas related to track but not in a positive way. Let’s see: Her ex-husband, former World shot put Champion, CJ Hunter, tested positive for banned substances numerous times in the lead-up to the Sydney Games and had to withdraw from the U.S. team in shame. Jones was subsequently linked to the BALCO steroids scandal in exclusive interviews with BALCO founder Victor Conte, who she then sued civilly for defamation and eventually settled out of court.
And … she had a child with former men’s 100-meter world-record holder Tim Montgomery, who has recently been in the news for a check fraud scheme with their former coach, 1976 sprint relay gold medalist Steve Riddick.
You almost need a program to follow this thing.
Nearly a year ago, Jones turned-up at the starting line for the first round of the women’s 100 meters at the outdoor championships in Carson, CA only to walk off the track with an apparent injury.
That’s the last we had heard from her until an altitude-assisted 11.06 mark in Mexico last month. She followed that up with an 11.16 win in cold, rainy Hengelo, Netherlands, the same day as the Prefontaine Classic.
So what did she manage to do in New York, aside from cause a big hubbub with her last minute arrival? She waxed the field and matched her 11.06 season mark on a drizzly, wet day, into a slight headwind, and stamped herself as someone to take seriously at the nationals less than three weeks from now.
I interviewed her as part of the ESPN2 “live” broadcast and asked her why she even bothered to come back after all the turmoil that’s surrounded her life over the past year and a half. She told me, “I love training and performing, and the people who know me best know that the allegations against me have always been false.” When I said to her that perception is reality and that the media and public’s perception of her is that she’s somehow connected to the steroid allegations, she said, “All I can do is come out here and compete to the best of my ability, and let the rest take care of itself.”
I can report that the crowd’s reception upon her introduction was very warm and enthusiastic,. and they were even more pleased at her victory. A healthy, visible Marion Jones, who is once again performing at the highest levels of the sport, is what the public wants to see and what the sport can benefit from, as she’ll be subject to periodic testing like every other athlete. It’s entirely possible that her 2003 maternity just took longer for her to recover from and she’ll eventually benefit from it, both emotionally and physically.
Jones wasn’t the only one impressing with speed on the track at the Reebok meet last Saturday. Once again, co-world record holder Justin Gatlin lined-up against the best sprinters in the country, under less than ideal conditions, and made it look like child’s play. What he did was simply run the fastest time by an American ever on U.S. soil when he broke the tape at 9.87 with negligible wind. This is quickly becoming an “average” result for Gatlin as we all sit back and wait for his highly anticipated head-to-head match-up with Jamaican co-record holder Asafa Powell, who ran 9.96 and 9.98 the previous day in Oslo.
After the meet was off the air at 8pm EDT there were still more fireworks awaiting the dwindling crowd. Though it may not have been an ideal evening for sprinting and jumping, the conditions were quite favorable for distance running and Meseret Defar, the Olympic 5,000 meter champion from Ethiopia, had some excitement of her own in store. Lagging behind world record pace, but yet tantalizingly close to it, she simply put her head down with 400 meters to go and reeled-off a 61-second final lap. She eclipsed the record of former countrywoman Elvan Abeylegesse of Turkey by a scant 15/100ths of a second, to take it from 14:24.68 down to 14:24.53.
Ironically, Defar’s margin under the record was less than Gatlin’s convincing victory in the men’s 100 meters when he ran 9.87 and second place Tyson Gay posted 10.04.