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Run sans a face

REUTERS, Athens
Four years ago, the women's Olympic athletics programme was billed as Marion Jones's "Drive for Five".
The Athens Games, it seems, with "The Race
without a Face".
The 100 metres, which begins on Friday, remains the blue riband event but Jones, who won an unprecedented five medals including three golds at the 2000 Sydney Games, will not start. Perhaps distracted or deflated by the allegations of drugs use ravaging United States sprinting following the BALCO scandal -- her partner Tim Montgomery is among those facing charges while she herself has been questioned -- she failed at the US trials, qualifying only for the long jump.
Drugs scandals have continued to ravage the sprint start-lists over recent months and weeks.
Indeed, the first three women over the line in the 200 metres at last year's World Championships -- Americans Kelli White and Torri Edwards and Russian Anastasiya Kapachinskaya --
have all been suspended since.
Greece's Katerina Thanou became the latest sprint casualty after farcically missing a drugs test just before the Games. She was awaiting the outcome of an International Olympic Committee (IOC) hearing on Wednesday.
There will, of course, still be highlights to celebrate in the women's programme.
Mozambique's Maria Mutola is favourite to muscle her way to a second Olympic 800 metres title while Britain's long-distance runner Paula Radcliffe, seeking her first gold medal at a major athletics championships, is primed to triumph over the historic course from marathon to Athens.
Russian Yelena Isinbayeva, a female version of Sergei Bubka, may even provide her sixth world record of the year on the way to pole vault gold, while Ethiopia's Derartu Tulu could become the first African athlete to win three Olympic golds.
But it is a mark of Jones's stature that, even in her absence, she may be discussed as much in Athens as in Sydney four years ago.
In those tension-laden seconds between "On your marks!", "Get set!" and the gun before the 100 and 200 metres finals, many might find them-
selves wondering how things might have unfolded had Jones been ensconced in one of the centre lanes.
The diminutive Gail Devers, with her fluorescent make-up and painted fingernails, may just be big enough to save the show.
The hurdler-sprinter may not be Jones, but she has a top-of-the-bill face.
She pipped Jones in the US national trials and, after the recent doping expulsions, now finds herself promoted into the American 100 metres team.
She will also compete in her favoured hurdles.
Winning over the barriers is well within her capabilities, even at the age of 37. That would be a story in itself, since she has inexplicably never won an Olympic medal of any colour in the 100 metres hurdles though she took gold in the sprint in 1992 and 1996.
France's Christine Arron has been installed as the new favourite in the sprint but if Devers were to do it again she would become the first woman in Olympic history to win three 100 metres titles.
Perhaps then, for a few moments at least, all talk about The Woman Who Wasn't There would peter out.