Track and field day for sceptics in Jones shame

On Athletics:So all the truth about Marion Jones adds up to one big lie. Just when it seemed Haile Gebrselassie had put some dignity and romance back into athletics, there she goes and blows it all. Typical. No wonder no one can break a world record anymore without arousing suspicion. Not even the great Ethiopian.

Jones never broke a world record, not unless you include the rarely run 4x200-metre relay, but between 1997 and 2002 she won 59 of her 60 100-metre races, running away from opponents with implausible ease, to become the most recognised face in world athletics. In the end what she couldn't run away from were the rumour and innuendo about drugs.

Some people will no doubt get considerable satisfaction from this latest drug revelation; it will prompt the predictable "sure-aren't-they-all-on-the-stuff" comments.

And maybe they are on the stuff. There aren't many great champions to look to anymore, and only last Monday athletics lost another of them with the death of the American discus thrower Al Oerter at the age of 71.

Oerter was among the greatest field-event athletes of the past century, winning four consecutive Olympic discus titles in 1956, 1960, 1964 and 1968. Only Carl Lewis has duplicated such a feat, winning the long jump from 1984 to 1996. What made Oerter's sweep all the more remarkable was the way he won: first breaking the Olympic record, next beating the world-record holder, then overcoming injury, and ultimately defying age.

Typically, Oerter made light of his triumphs, later saying, "The first one, I was really young; the second, not very capable; the third, very injured; the fourth, old."

Maybe it's just as well Oerter wasn't around to hear of the sad fall of Jones, once held in the same high regard as he always will be. Oerter was an Olympic hero back when that meant something. A sprinter at high school in New York, he famously discovered his forte when a discus landed near his feet at training. He flung it back with such casual flair and power that the track coach instantly turned him into a thrower.

Six days before his event at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo, Oerter slipped on the wet concrete of a discus circle, tearing rib cartilage on his right side (his throwing side), causing internal bleeding and severe pain. Team doctors told him he would not throw for six weeks.

"These are the Olympics," he told them. "You die before you quit."

Four rounds into the final Oerter was lying third, but his next throw, which left him doubled over in pain, flew 61 metres, another Olympic record and gold medal.

Oerter's career did not end after those four Olympics. In 1980, age 43, he threw his lifetime best of 69.45 metres, second-longest in the world that year. He also competed in the 1984 US Olympic trails, before quitting elite competition for good in 1987: "The drug culture had taken over," he claimed.

And maybe it had. It's hard to think of any great champion of the past two decades who hasn't attracted some finger of suspicion somewhere down the line, especially if a world record was broken. Even an old-time enthusiast like myself had some doubts about Gebrselassie's world record in the marathon last Sunday - a stunning two hours, four minutes and 26 seconds - especially after listening to him talk about it.

The training, he claimed, had been severe, sometimes up to 150 miles a week, which made his old 10,000-metre training seem like "a joke".

I doubt Gebrselassie was running 150 miles a week. It was probably much more. I also doubt 2:04.26 was as "very painful" as he claimed, because he looked to be holding back over the last few kilometres, ensuring he'd break the record, yet still leaving room to improve it again down the road. Which I have no doubt he will.

And another thing: Gebrselassie claims he is 34, which some people see as another reason to doubt his continued record-breaking ability (he has set 24 world records or world bests).

Whatever about that ability, and he's certainly not the oldest marathon-record holder, I do doubt his age, because he's probably much closer to 40.

His athletic credibility, however, I wouldn't doubt, not for one second. Maybe that's just me.

The truth is I have no idea whether Gebrselassie has taken performance-enhancing drugs. But having been lucky enough to have met him in the flesh (or skin and bone, given his impossibly light frame), I have never found him anything but wholly believable.

On one such occasion, a few years back, Gebrselassie was in Dublin for some promotional work with Concern, the result of his deep awareness of Third World issues. It was a wintry evening, dark, wet and windy, but after a series of interviews his only thought was getting out for a training run. He spent 45 minutes running laps around St Stephen's Green.

Maybe for every Marion Jones there is an Al Oerter, a Haile Gebrselassie. Maybe not.

Either way a little more athletics credibility died this week.