Jones, whose itinerant childhood included a stretch when her family was homeless, seemed so close to a triumphant moment, leading the 100-meter hurdles with two of them to go.
But the hurdles can be a cruel event, and when Jones’s foot hit the ninth hurdle, it threw off her stride and allowed six other women in the race to power past her. In a fraction of a second, she went from what looked like sure victory to sheer agony.
Dawn Harper, Jones’s teammate, grabbed the gold with a personal-best 12.54 seconds.
Jones dropped to her knees when she crossed the finish line in seventh. She put her forehead on the track and pounded her fist on the ground, a lifetime dream clipped by one hurdle.
When Jones finally did stand up, she watched a replay on the big scoreboard screen. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she absorbed the finality of it.
“I crossed the line, and it was very hard to get back up,” Jones said. “Today is hard. Tomorrow’s going to be harder, but what can you do but try again?”
The flip side of Jones’s agony was Harper’s joy. She had been running in Jones’s wake this season while Jones turned herself into the world’s best in this event. Harper had grown up in East St. Louis, Mo., idolizing the Olympic star Jackie Joyner-Kersee. Now, she is an Olympic champion in her own right.
“It was shocking,” Cherry said. “But that’s what the hurdles are all about, shocking results.”
The big scoreboard screen played a more benign role earlier in the night, when Usain Bolt of Jamaica spent the last 50 meters of his 200 meters semifinal watching it.
It became another moment in these Olympics in which Bolt has defied all the rules. He beat the field in the 100 meters by so much that he spent the last 10 meters celebrating. Now running the 200, he had cleared the field in his semifinal heat and slowed again. In his 100 heats, he had turned his head to see where his competitors were. This time, he looked up.
“I’m just enjoying myself in trying to get through,” Bolt said. “You can’t be too serious. You’ve got to enjoy it.
“I was just making sure I was in good position. It was easier to look at the board, so I just looked up to see where everyone else is.”
“I’m loving this,” Spearmon said. “I’m getting better. Crawford is looking good, Dix is looking good. It felt like that was a great preview of the final, don’t you?”
The second round of the men’s 110-meter hurdles was supposed to be another chance for Chinese fans to focus on the every step of their star athlete, Liu Xiang, but Liu’s injury did not keep the crowd here from adopting another athlete to hang its hopes on. The fans roared when Shi Dongpeng advanced to the semifinals, despite running in Lane 9 in the second round. He finished third in his heat, won by the American David Payne.
The world-record holder in the event, Dayron Robles of Cuba, won his heat with ease, as did David Oliver, the top American contender after Terrence Trammell went down with an injury in the first round. Oliver posted the best time, 13.16, and Robles ran 13.19.
“It’s always too bad when two top guys go out of the race like that,” Oliver said of Liu and Trammell. “But things happen. I’ve got to take care of my business. I got over 20 hurdles. I have 20 more to go to reach my ultimate goal.”
In the other finals Tuesday night, Rashid Ramzi of Bahrain won the men’s 1,500, Andrey Silnov of Russia won the high jump and Gerd Kanter of Estonia won the discus.
One surprise was the showing of Roqaya al-Gassra of Bahrain, who won her heat by a good margin in 22.76. Al-Gassra runs with all of her body covered, except her face. She wears a stretchy head covering, long sleeves and long pants. When she crossed the finish line, she fell to her knees and kissed the track.
In the men’s 400 semifinals, the gold-medal favorites LaShawn Merritt and Jeremy Wariner of the United States posted the two best times and set up a head-to-head battle in Thursday’s final.
“You hit a hurdle about twice a year,” Jones said. “It’s just a shame it happened in the biggest race of my life.”
referrence:www.sterlingtiffany.com
