By Vahe Gregorian, St. Louis Post-Dispatch –
LONDON — Seconds after zipping through her preliminary heat to the second-fastest time of the day in the 100-meter hurdles Monday at the Olympic Stadium, Lolo Jones knew what had befallen one of the top contenders in the event.
She went to the side of her inconsolable competitor, four-time Jamaican Olympian Brigitte Foster-Hylton, who had clipped the fifth hurdle with her trailing leg and failed to advance.
She tried to comfort her, only for Foster-Hylton to hurl herself to the ground in despair.
“My heart breaks for Brigitte. The emotions were just outpouring from her,” said Jones, who won the heat in 12.68 seconds. “Even if she would have punched me, I totally would understand.”
And then some.
Entering the 2008 Beijing Games’ final with the fastest time in the world that year, Jones had seized the lead into the last 25 meters of the race with two hurdles separating her from gold. And then she lost her mind, as she put it afterward, and thwacked the ninth hurdle to finish seventh. After buckling in a heap of tears, according to her official Olympics bio, Jones remained on the track at the Bird’s Nest to congratulate the gold medalist, East St. Louis native Dawn Harper, who won in 12.54 seconds.
Despite Jones’ generous gesture under duress, within moments a process was kindled that only has escalated and has led to the very topic of Jones seeming to become an annoyance to Harper and is at the root of what is making Jones a complicated figure.
At least in Harper’s perception, most of the post-Beijing news conference consisted of questions not about her victory but about Jones and the misfortune that enabled Harper’s gold.
While there were more questions there about Harper’s own story than she recalls, the implication was that Harper simply had backed into perhaps the greatest moment of her life.
While Harper answered all questions with grace and good humor that night, a dynamic was set that has persisted since and symbolically repeated itself recently:
In June, Harper won the Olympic Trials, Jones squeaked in third. Two nights later, Jones appeared on NBC’s “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” a gig that anyone who’s ever been around Harper knows she’d relish and own.
Because of some combination of Jones’ glamour appeal, a richly told back story of her nomadic, poverty-stricken childhood and seemingly shrewd marketing, the difference in attention and rewards they’ve received is vast.
And it has been geometrically more since Jones, who turned 30 on Sunday, recently proclaimed her virginity and intent to save herself for marriage.
Between that and her frequent references to her Christianity, she was linked on social media to NFL quarterback and cultural icon Tim Tebow, further raising her profile.
While the photogenic and personable Harper, 28, hardly is unknown, she is relatively anonymous compared to Jones, who commands broad celebrity status after being profiled by such entities as HBO and Rolling Stone and being featured on one of the three covers Time magazine used to set up the London Olympics.
Accordingly, Jones has nine sponsors, including McDonald’s, ASICS, Red Bull and Oakley, while Harper lists on her website three, including Nike.
And by at least one social media metric, interest in her dwarfs that extended toward Harper. As of early Monday evening in London, Jones had 248,238 followers on Twitter, and counting. Harper had 3,165.
All of which had been vexing Harper, who has some tales of adversity and injury of her own.
“Hmmm, is it frustrating? At one point it was, I don’t want to lie and say that it wasn’t. It was,” she said last week, though adding that after thought and prayer she has told herself, “Nothing that someone else gets can take away from my journey, can take away from the joy that I have.”
Meanwhile, for some weeks now Jones has been contending with the pendulum of fame swinging the other way.
She has scarcely been available for comment in London, speaking only for seconds after the heat Monday.
But she told Time she was conscious of other athletes resenting her for some time.
“For girls to get mad at me because I may get attention, because of the mishap (in Beijing) or how I handle myself, I think it’s the stupidest thing ever,” she said. “I don’t think they realize the fame I’ve had has not been the cool fame.
“It’s been the fame like, ‘Ohhhhh, you’re the girl that messed up at the Olympics.’ Stab wound, stab wound, stab wound. Like, who wants that?”
On Saturday, Jones’ mystique was critiqued bluntly by The New York Times, under the headline, “For Lolo Jones, Everything Is Image.”
Jones, it said, has received far more publicity than any other U.S. track and field athlete in the Games “based not on achievement but her exotic beauty and on a sad and cynical marketing campaign.
“Essentially, Jones has decided she will be whatever anybody wants her to be—vixen, virgin, victim—to draw attention to herself and the many products she endorses.”
In the end, Jones might best be seen between the extremes, as a personable, witty and talented athlete but perhaps not someone who deserves either deification or condemnation.
Moreover, it might be asked why Jones shouldn’t embrace the attention that the media and sponsors have lavished upon her, particularly because she comes from an upbringing of upheaval so great that she at times stole food for her meals.
And if she and her handlers are cultivating, or manipulating, an image, it’s not as if she has no credibility in the sport. She is a two-time world indoor champion and the 2008 U.S. trials champion.
Evidently healthy again after a series of injuries made her potential in London seem limited, Jones can’t be ruled out of the medal hunt.
Especially in a race that she knows as well as anyone always is laden with unpredictable obstacles.
