Olympic champion Jones cannot defend her title

MARION JONES may still win her ticket to Athens but the great leveller that is the US Olympic trials has seen to it that she will be a mere bit-part player when the Games get under way next month.

As the most powerful track and field nation on the planet takes a two-day break in the selection of its team for the XXVIII Olympiad, there is much for the Jones household to consider from the opening four days of these trials on the campus of California State University in Sacramento.

Not only did Jones fail to qualify for the women’s 100m team on Saturday, but her partner Tim Montgomery was eliminated from the men’s 100m team the following day.

So the men’s world record holder will be absent from the greatest showcase for his talents while the reigning women’s Olympic champion will be denied the opportunity to defend one of the titles she seemed to win so effortlessly in Sydney four years ago.

Jones was due to begin her qualification process for the long jump in Sacramento last night, an event in which she won bronze in Sydney and one which now represents her best chance of participating in Athens given her form in the 200m this season.

Montgomery, meanwhile, was a pure 100m man and had not entered the 200m here, thus ruling out any chance of an appearance at the Games this time round, given the unlikelihood of him being invited to join the men’s sprint relay squad.

Even the suggestion of that was scoffed at by USA Track & Field officials late on Sunday evening; the reason being that the country’s governing body is delighted to see the back of Montgomery.

The world record holder he may be, but this 29-year-old from North Carolina is strictly damaged goods. The BALCO scandal has seen to that.

It has embroiled both Montgomery and Jones since it was revealed they had been asked to testify before a federal grand jury investigating the distribution of banned, performance-enhancing drugs, including the previously undetectable designer steroid THG (tetrahydrogestrinone) Jones has not been charged but is still thought to be under investigation. But Montgomery and three others have been charged by the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) on the basis of non-analytical positives, meaning they did not test positive but other evidence points to them having cheated.