Dream is over for golden race pair

14 April 2012

This time last year, they were the happy, shiny first couple of athletics, the marketing men's dream. She had just given birth to their first 'superchild'; he was boasting about the prospect of a world title to go with his world record.

Today, though, Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery could only survey the wreckage of a shared Olympic ambition and try desperately to salvage their reputations from amid the rubble.

For Montgomery, the game seems up. At the US Olympic trials in Sacramento, he missed out on a place at the Games by finishing seventh - one from last - in the 100m final, a result which will have surprised no one who has watched his inexorable decline from that day in Paris two years ago when, quite out of the blue, he ran the fastest 100metres of all time in 9.78sec. Last night, a different athlete, he ran 10.13sec.

The only people relieved about this fact, no doubt, were US Olympic officials who are at least now spared the potential embarrassment of having to kick Montgomery out of the team should an international panel of arbitrators find him guilty of doping. All Montgomery, charged by the US Anti-Doping Agency with steroid use, can look forward to now is a battle to avoid a lifetime ban amid a growing wave of cynicism in American sport.

His other half, Jones, who is under investigation too by the USADA but has not yet been charged, must be alarmed that the wave could sweep her away too. She has talked determinedly about fighting for her reputation but having failed to qualify to defend her 100m crown in Athens by finishing a tired fifth in Saturday's final, she had nothing to say except for a petulant shot at journalists.

She can still make it to the Games, with her long jump qualifying event coming today and the 200m later in the week. Yet, you suspect few care any more about Jones - and you wonder how much she cares about track these days. The shine's gone.

American audiences love fairytales but fairytales don't have ugly supporting cast lists which include CJ Hunter (shot putting dope), Charlie Francis (Ben Johnson's coach) and Victor Conte (founder of BALCO indicted on steroid-related charges).

It is possible that Jones is not the athlete she once was because her comeback after giving birth had proved more challenging than she ever thought. In truth, though, she seems like a runner whose every step is burdened by the crushing weight of the BALCO scandal. Even fellow sportsmen like Gary Hall Jnr, at the US swimming trials, have turned on her, saying: "She should be banned for life."

Last night, Montgomery was apparently forced to flee the throng of reporters in Sacramento with the pitiful lament: "This is the reason I didn't win. I got y'all on my back . . . every day."

For the sake of the Games themselves, it was probably just as well that he didn't make it because if his case hadn't been heard by the Court of Arbitration for Sport before the Olympics, the circus in Athens would have been a thousand times sillier. It still could be if one of the other three sprinters charged by USADA with steroid use qualifies in Sacramento. One, Chryste Gaines, has already bombed out of the women's 100m but Alvin Harrison has made it through the first round of the 400m.

Jones was hammered in the 100 by a new champion, LaTasha Colander, who is tutored by Trevor Graham, the coach Jones and Montgomery dumped last year before embarking on their misguided partnership with Francis. Last night, Graham's success continued when two more of his pupils, Justin Gatlin (9.92sec) and Shawn Crawford (9.93sec) qualified for the Games by chasing home reigning Olympic champ Maurice Greene (9.91sec) in what US athletics chief Craig Masback hailed as the best 100m field ever with six men clocking 10.04sec or better.

Graham also happens to be the man identified by the San Jose Mercury News as the coach who gave the USADA a syringe containing the designer steroid THG, which kicked off perhaps the biggest drugs scandal sport has ever witnessed. Yet Montgomery's downward slide seems only to have coincided with a magnificent comeback by Greene, who had been widely considered to have seen his best days but who is now the man to beat in Athens, where he has already won a world title and broken a world record.

In temperatures almost touching 100 degrees, Greene fulfilled his longterm boast about winning here. "Greatest of all time, what can I say?" he said, sticking his tongue out after crossing the finish line. Oh dear; he may be the best but humility still doesn't come easy.

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100m Race

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Performance-Enhancing Drugs

Dream is over for golden race pair

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