She has been called "the next great sports superstar." She's a world-champion sprinter and a national-champion basketball player. She has been considered the next great hope for American track and field since she was fourteen. At sixteen, she made the U.S. Olympic team. Nike has created a shoe for her, Annie Leibovitz has photographed her, and the world is watching to see if she'll be the first person ever to win five gold medals in track at the Olympics.
Marion Jones is faster than any woman alive, but where did she come from and where is she going?
Ron Rapoport's biography of the woman the New York Times called "the most prominent track athlete on the planet" is a remarkable profile of a woman not at the end of her athletic career, but at the beginning. It's the story of a season at the highest level of sport, and the triumphs and tragedies of Jones's quest to win four gold medals at the 1999 World Championships, the gateway to the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.
Her story is also that of an American girl born into a society just beginning to make room for women on its playing fields. She played baseball, basketball. She ran. She grew tall and beautiful and strong. She led he college basketball team to a national championship. But it was running that she loved; she could run faster than anyone.
Rapoport follows Jones from meet to meet during the 1999 outdoor track season, a witness to her domination. With unprecedented access to Jones, her colleagues, family, friends and foes, Rapoport artfully presents the stories of a world-class athlete whose quest began as the dream of a little girl.
In 1985, sixth-grader Marion Jones wrote a brief essay about herself:
My plans for the future are to be in the 1992 Olympics. I've been training a lot, and the boys at my school are good practice. I know if I don't get in the Olympics I have to have a backup so I plan to be an electrical engineer like my uncle.
In 1992 Jones did make the Olympic team, albeit as an alternate on the 4x100-meter relay team. She turned it down because she didn't want her first gold medal to be one she didn't sweat for herself. In 1996 a broken foot kept her sidelined. But in September 2000, Marion Jones will try to do what no one else has ever done: win five gold medals in track in the Olympics. Looks like she won't need to become an electrical engineer after all.
Keeping up with the fastest woman in the world is no easy task, but Ron Rapoport handled it well, following Jones during the 1999 outdoor track circuit. The result is See How She Runs, a warm tribute to Mrs. Jones and her quest for Olympic gold. This is no fluff piece; Rapoport describes Jones's troubled relationships with her mother and estranged father, the tense situation when she quit the Tar Heels basketball team to concentrate solely on track, and the painful injuries she has suffered. The picture that emerges through it all is of a superstar in the making--a gifted, driven, charismatic athlete who runs like the wind. A wonderful read. -Sunny Delaney
