The Summer Olympics: Marion Jones

Marion Jones, one of the world's loveliest women and demonstrably the fastest, is sitting before a mirror having makeup applied--a superfluous act. She is being prepped for the first of two shoots she will submit to this afternoon. Hotshot photogs have been flown in from the States because Jones has agreed to give them some of her time--and time is precious in the world of Marion Jones. Every minute between now and Sept. 22 has been carefully planned.

On that Friday, at 10 a.m., the timing will become even more precise. The starter gun's first bark will launch Jones on a nine-day offensive at the Olympic Stadium in Homebush Bay. Her schedule will be excruciatingly divided and subdivided, etched ultimately by split thousandths of a second. She'll try to win five gold medals, negotiating an intricate shoal of qualifying heats, medal races, meals, catnaps, jumps and baton passes. Five golds in one Olympics has not been done by a track athlete since the Flying Finn, Paavo Nurmi, blew through Paris in 1924. Weeks before the opening ceremony, Jones is already the story of the Games.

This happens sometimes: an athlete announces a bid for multiple medals and lays siege to the spotlight. Spitz, Heiden, Lewis, Blair. Michael Johnson with his 200-m/400-m double an Olympiad ago. "It's great to be the headliner," says Johnson, who seems relieved that he qualified to run only the 400 m this time around. "But it's very intense, an awful lot of pressure."

"I'm trying to not get into the hype," says Jones as her cheeks are dusted. "I think I've done a good job with the pressure--so far." The French makeup artist looks Jones up and down and jabs for her knees with the powder puff. "Zis heeere?" Jones' knees are singed with burns caused by taking a sprinter's stance on the coarse surface of the track dozens of times each day. "No," she says sweetly but emphatically. "No--that's me."

Jones is always sweet and usually emphatic. She is asked as she sits there whether her storied who's-running-for-second-place? confidence has been overhyped. Her answer is delivered without a trace of meanness, but it is definite: "I do see it like that--that I'll win. When people are taken aback by that, I'm surprised. I would hope those women you saw racing against me last night are going to the Games to win. I don't know how realistic it is for everybody, but..."

Here's how realistic it is in the sprints. The night before, this rippled 5-ft. 10-in. racing machine ran away with her opponents' gold-medal dreams before 70,000 track-crazed Belgians. Jones, not known for her starts, popped the second fastest reaction time in a nine-woman field and plowed through a headwind to a 10.83 clocking to win the 100 m. In Zurich a few weeks earlier, she had a terrible start, then chased down the pack, nipping fellow American Inger Miller at the wire. When Jones is slow out of the blocks, she wins. When she's fast, there's no contest. Her rivals are left without solutions, short of finding a Tonya Harding among them to execute some kneecapping. In Brussels the women hung around after the race muttering about a quick gun, doing what they could to keep their heads in the game.