Simon Barnes

From Simon Barnes in Sydney

Loyalty is a noble virtue and those that wish to be loyal must be prepared to make sacrifices. Today, Marion Jones of the United States sacrificed on the altar of loyalty a gold medal and with it her chance of making sporting history. Gold medal for loyalty: bronze for long jump. As for enlightened self-interest, she didn’t even make the final.

Jones: the phenomenon of the Games. Jones: and the Drive for Five. She came into the Games going for an unprecedented five gold medals, and she picked up the first two, in the 100 metres and 200 metres, with an air of brilliant inevitability. And then the long jump. Well, the Drive for Four is still on, but it doesn’t rhyme.

Marion Jones

It’s hardly a bolt from the blue, unless you read only American newspapers. Jones has always had trouble with the long jump; the trouble being that she can’t do it. Her technical flaws are so blindingly obvious, a person who had never watched athletics before would know at once that there was something badly amiss.

She lands standing up - well, slight exaggeration. She lands in a bent-kneed crouch, round about the position Ian Botham used to adopt at second slip. It is amazing that she can jump so far when she lands like a Harrier jump-jet. She has such fantastic speed on the runway that it carries her a good way into the sandpit.

But it didn't carry her the extra 8cm she needed to go past Heike Drechsler, who gave an exhibition of controlled grace and power to take the gold medal. Silver went to Fiona May, of Derby, who got so fed up with the way the now-defunct British Athletic Federation was treating her that she became an Italian, marrying her Italian boyfriend in the process.

Jones probably had the sped and power to win on Friday night, but she couldn’t maximise her considerable advantages. Up like a rocket and down like a stick - defying every principle of the sport.

It’s about leg-shoot. Long jumpers touch down with their bums as low to ground as they dare, with their legs as far in front of them as possible. As they land, they hurl their bodies forward to overtake their feet, because it is the most backward mark in the sand that is measured from. Flopping back is a disaster.

No danger of that happening with Jones. Chance would be a fine thing. She lands in this stiff-legged, awkward, half-upright posture - like a girl in the playground trying to do what the big girls are doing and succeeding only in looking silly.

She is coached in all five events by Trevor Graham. She owes him great loyalty, she says, because he was the one who took her on when nobody else was interested. Jolly good; does her credit.

It does Graham no credit whatsoever. It was, no doubt, a traditional case of coach’s vanity, and coach’s jealousy. A coach seldom wants an outsider in this intense two-way relationship. No doubt to both of them, the idea of a specialist long-jump coach seemed an infidelity. Forsaking all other; forsaking her expected royal flush of golds.

Heike Drechsler’s victory is a truly great achievement. Drechsler won the long-jump gold medal at the world championships in 1983 at the age of 18. She was a product of the East German hot-house system, and that is an experience that would have soured another person for life. She missed the Atlanta Games in 1996 with a knee injury that really should have ended her career. But here she is, still leaping. She has cleared 7m more than 400 times in her life; amazingly, she didn’t need to do so today.

Afterwards, Jones was in sombre mood, but very gracious. "The most positive thing I can take from all this is that in 30 years' time I’ll be telling my grandkids about how I jumped with one of the greatest jumpers of all time," she said, and it is hard to do better than that. She will go ahead with her plans to run in the two relays, no doubts on that score. And she will continue with the long jump afterwards: "I’m not going to crawl into a shell and decide I’ll never to do the long jump again," she said.

Drechsler was just as charming in victory: "Marion is a great fighter, and if she gets a little more rhythm on the runway, she can jump even farther."

It was a low-key ending in what was, to be frank, a low-key competition in difficult conditions, jumping into a headwind. Jones finished with two no-jumps, with four no-jumps in her set of six, which is really handicapping yourself. Her fifth jump looked pretty big, but they don’t count them when you put your foot in the plasticene. Jonathan Edwards wan his gold in the triple jump by demonstrating control at speed. Jones won the bronze by demonstrating uncontrolled speed.

She is very cast down, as well she might be at the end of a wild dream. Jones is such a spectacularly talented athlete, there really was never going to be anybody come close to her in the sprints, and she won both by colossal margins.

She is the fastest thing since Florence Griffith-Joyner, who won three golds and a silver in Seoul in 1988. She might yet finish in triumph by beating the achievements of Flo-Jo, but the sad thing is that triumph will always be tarnished by the one that got away.