Day to forget for Marion Jones

Already the subject of some debilitating rumors, Marion Jones on Friday night became the subject of some debilitating facts. Placing fifth in the long jump and part of a botched relay handoff that prevented the U.S. from even finishing the race, Jones crumbled as she left the track at Olympic Stadium.

She began to cry.

"I exceeded my wildest dreams in a negative sense," Jones said.

The star of the Sydney Olympics in 2000 in which she won five medals, Jones will leave the 2004 Games not only without a medal but with not much of a positive Olympic experience to take her mind off rumors that have circulated around her for months. If the playing field is indeed the respite an athlete has from harsh reality, Jones has been granted no such reprieve.

The long jump, which was never her strongest event, was going to be her only individual event of these Olympics. After scratching in her first jump, Jones posted a 6.85-meter jump on her second try and then posted succeeding jumps that covered progressively less and less distance.

Three Russians won the event and Jones was sure not to bellyache about her performance afterward.

"I could say the fouls were wrong but I am never been one to give excuses," said Jones, who scratched twice. "Nobody wants to hear that. The Russians swept and they deserved it because no one challenged them and I was one of them. That's just the way it goes."

While she was a bit stoic about her long jump failure - she did win a bronze medal in Sydney - Jones was anything but in describing her 4X100 relay race. The four American women sprinters had the season's best time, 41.67, and not only looked like a lock for the gold medal but were given a fair chance at both the Olympic (41.60) and world (41.37) records in the event.

Angela Williams ran the first leg and handed the baton smartly to Jones. Jones had the U.S. right in the mix when she approached Lauryn Williams, 18, and one of the up-and-coming sprinters in America.

As Jones neared Williams, the teenager began to take off.

"I got out too quick," Williams said. "I probably went out too quick."

Jones sprinted as fast as she could to catch her and, noticing Williams taking off too soon, yelled out, "Stop! Wait! Wait!"

"I heard her," Williams said of Jones, "but I didn't react in time."

Jones kept leaning forward, trying to place the baton in Williams' hand, only to finally give up because the pair had left the prescribed passing zone.

"After sprinting for those 100 meters," said Jones citing a fact that didn't aid in the baton pass, "I was out of breath (by the time she was ready for the pass)."

Jones said she would have loved to go back out there and run the relay again, knowing how unrealistic and impossible that would be. Just for the chance to recapture the moment the Americans thought was theirs.

"It was our race to lose," said Angela Williams.

And indeed it was.

All of which doesn't set well for Jones who had already experienced, what she termed Wednesday, "a hell of a year." And she didn't mean it in a positive way.

"Today was a rough one," Jones said. "A real tough one. When I woke up this morning this was not the way I figured the day would go."

Jones said she would begin preparations soon for her anticipated participation in the 2008 Games in Beijing.

Bob Padecky of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat is covering the Athens Games for The Gainesville Sun on behalf of The New York Times Regional Newspaper Group.