Jones Returns to Track After Athens Failure
By Gene Cherry
RALEIGH, N.C. (Reuters) - American sprinter Marion Jones returns to her native California for a 400 meters race against Australian Jana Pittman Sunday hoping to re-ignite her faltering career.
Jones, who failed to win a medal at last year’s Athens Olympics after claiming five in the 2000 Sydney Games, will meet world 400 meters hurdles champion Pittman in the Mt. San Antonio College Relays near Los Angeles.
It will be her first race since the Athens Games.
European meeting organizers and sports officials will closely monitor Jones’s form after a troubled year of doping accusations and her failure to make the U.S. Olympic team in either the 100 or 200 meters.
She competed in the long jump and 4x100 meters relay only in Athens and received a medal in neither.
Jones’s new coach Steve Riddick told Reuters he expected the 29-year-old sprinter would run very well Sunday.
“I guess ‘very well’ could be anywhere under 50 seconds,” Steve Riddick said in a telephone interview from his office in Norfolk, Virginia, where Jones and her partner, 100 meters world record holder Tim Montgomery, train on week days.
TOUGH
“Marion is fit,” said Riddick, a former sprinter, who began working with Jones last October. "She is ready to go. She is going to run, and run tough.
Riddick also trains Bahamian Olympic 400 meters champion Tonique Williams-Darling, although she and Jones do not work together.
“Once she gets one (race) under her belt, it is going to be tough for the rest of the world,” Riddick added. “I think she is back where she wants to be.”
Riddick said giving birth to a child in 2003 had affected Jones’s performances last year.
“I figured it would take a couple of years for her to come back,” he said. “When you give life you lose a little bit.”
Riddick said Jones’s goals this year were to make the U.S. team for August’s Helsinki world championships in both the 100 and 200 meters and the 4x100 and 4x400 relays.
Her manager Charles Wells said Jones had no plans to compete in the long jump this year.
Jones will run a 4x200 relay at the Kansas Relays in Lawrence, Kansas, on April 23 then may run her first 100 meters of the season in Fort de France, Martinique on April 30 although no contract has been signed.
Montgomery may also run a 100 meters in Martinique.
“Tim is in very good shape,” Riddick said. “They (Jones and Montgomery) are going to be tough.”