This dream needlessly costs her

At the 2000 U.S. Olympic track and field trials in Sacramento, Joan Benoit Samuelson, who won the first women's Olympic marathon in Los Angeles in 1984, entered a corporate box above the stadium with her two young daughters and saw Marion Jones watching the competition on the track below. The girls were fascinated by Jones, Samuelson told a publicist. Would it be possible for them to meet her?

Soon Jones was fussing over them, and Samuelson, beaming, was asking me how old Jones was. Twenty-four, I said.

"Twenty-four . . . 28 . . . 32 . . . Samuelson said, grinning as she ticked off forthcoming Olympiads on her fingers. "You know, [Jones] should compete in as many Olympics as she wins medals in Sydney. Maybe she could finish her career by running the marathon."

With the image last week of Jones standing weeping on the courthouse steps still fresh, it might be difficult to recall a time when she was all but inescapable as the symbol of the possibilities, and the joy, that could flow from a life devoted to sport.

Marion in a series of Nike commercials whose punch lines ("Where's the love? Can you dig it?") became national catchphrases. Marion on billboards scowling behind Jack Nicholson-like wraparounds for Oakley Sunglasses. Marion wearing a sexy tube top in an ad for TAG Heuer watches. Marion coming out of the starting blocks in a book of photos by Annie Leibovitz. Marion in fashion shoots for Vogue.

Marion on the cover of Time and Newsweek at the same time and -- I swear this is true -- in a robotic diagram superimposed over her picture on the cover of Scientific American.

How she got to that point might also seem a little hazy now. Jones, whose nine state sprint and long jump championships and basketball prowess make her possibly the finest high school athlete, male or female, California has ever produced. Jones, who as a freshman was the starting point guard on North Carolina's NCAA championship basketball team. Jones, who in 1998 compiled the most astonishing season in the history of track and field, competing in 38 events on five continents and winning 37 of them.

She emerged from that odyssey ranked No. 1 in the world at 100 and 200 meters and in the long jump, and I had seen enough. Write a book with me, I'd asked her. I'll hang around next season and we'll get it out before the Olympics. Fine, she said. Let's do it.