`I WANT TO BE REMEMBERED' MARION JONES MIGHT FAIL IN HER BID TO WIN AN UNPRECEDENTED FIVE GOLD MEDALS IN ONE OLYMPIC GAMES BUT SHE'D NEVER FORGIVE HERSELF IF SHE DIDN'T TRY.

Byline: Karen Crouse Staff Writer

Marion Jones is the student next door who vows to make straight A's at school this year; she's the saleswoman across the street who has pledged to move more widgets this month than anyone else; she's the mom on the corner who resolves not to lose her patience with her young children for rest of the day.

Jones is one of us, only the goals she sets are nose-bleed high. 'Tis always been so. She grew up in Palmdale and Oxnard, dreaming dreams as big as the boulevards that brought the world to her door.

When she was 8 years old, she wrote on a blackboard, ``I want to be an Olympic champion.'' Winding her way through Pinecrest Prep in Sherman Oaks, Rio Mesa High in Oxnard, Thousand Oaks High and then North Carolina, that simple statement would be stretched and widened to read, ``I want to be an Olympic champion in five events.''

No other U.S. track athlete, male or female, has won more than four gold medals in a single Olympics. Jones is poised to change that in Sydney. She is standing on history's brink, a force to be reckoned with in the 100 meters and 200 meters, the long jump and the 400 and 1,600 relays.

Her motivation is simple. ``I want to do something that nobody's ever done,'' said Jones, a nine-time California state high school track champion and a key contributor to the Tar Heels' 1994 NCAA women's basketball championship. ``I want to be remembered when I'm long gone.''

Her goal is galling to some people who'd prefer she that she daintily keep her dreams to herself. Of course, it's the competitors ostensibly standing in Jones' way who seem most offended. Jones, 24, goes faster than a holiday weekend, but she can't outrun human nature.

Christine Arron of France has said of Jones, ``Perhaps she has a body of steel, but when she starts to break down, I'll be surprised if she's so arrogant.'' (Never mind that you can't spell arrogant without A-r-r-o-n).

Inger Miller of Van Nuys, the second-fastest American in the 100 and 200 sprints and a perfectly pleasant person, turns into a hissing radiator whenever Jones' name comes up in conversation.

Jones steadfastly refuses to be drawn into a war of words. She's content to let her times do her talking. ``None of you has heard me say a bad word about anybody,'' she said earlier this summer, ``and I'm not going to start now.''

Maybe it's only natural for a runner whose back has become an all-too- familiar sight to opponents to become the subject of so much backbiting. What is it the 19th century American essayist Washington Irving once said? ``There is never jealousy where there is not strong regard.''

The truth is those with no reason to feel threatened by Jones are enthralled with her. This much was made wonderfully, abundantly clear at the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials in Sacramento in August, when Jones took an hour one day between the 100 final and the 200 preliminaries to autograph copies of her biography, ``See How She Runs.''

Athletes-slash-authors have been known to sign hundreds of books at such affairs without making a single connection, reserving their only eye contact for their manager once they've decided their hand is tired and they can't bear to be around their adoring public one minute more.

Jones wasn't anything like that. She made eye contact and smiled with each person who made it to the front of the snaking line. ``Hi, how are you?'' she asked over and over and over, each time managing to sound as though she was greeting a dear friend.

If asked something in return, she gave polysyllabic responses that sent the fan floating on Cloud Nine into the night.

Margaret Deatherage, a teacher in Berlin who was visiting her brother in Sacramento, happened to see Jones interviewed on local television and decided to see what the personality was like in person. She stood in line outside the Sacramento State track for more than an hour for an interaction that lasted not much longer than one of Jones's 100 meter races but left an indelible impression.

``Oh, she's wonderful,'' Deatherage cooed. ``Just delightful. I'll be rooting hard for her during the Olympics.''

A few people behind Deatherage in line was a man who was in such a state after his few seconds with Jones that he wandered off as if in a fog until Jones' voice cut through his daze like a horn.

``Steve,'' she yelled amiably after him, rising in her seat, waving two copies of her biography, ``your books!''

Jones' interplay with strangers at the Trials looked as easy and effortless as her stride. The woman whom her detractors call aloof and arrogant and worse was nowhere in evidence. What people saw instead was the person who took the time to telephone a fellow athlete after the latter produced a breakthrough performance.

Seventeen-year-old Monique Henderson, a senior-to-be at San Diego's Morse High, became the most celebrated female high school runner since Jones when she clocked one of the top times in the world in the 400 meters at the state meet. Jones, who had finished fifth in the 100 meters and fourth in the 200 meters at the 1992 Olympic Trials after her junior year at Thousand Oaks High, telephoned Henderson shortly thereafter.

``She was so nice,'' said Henderson, who is in the running to be one of Jones' relay mates in the 1,600. ``We talked for 15 minutes.''

Among the planet's fastest runners, the capacity to acknowledge a marvelous performance that's not one's own is about as rare a thing to see as cellulite. They typically are a bundle of fast-twitch muscles and insecurities.

Jones was acting perfectly in character when she called Henderson. Consider her behavior at a meet in China in 1998. She won the 100 meters in the sixth-fastest time in history (10.71), while the hometown heroine, Li Xuemei, who was expected to challenge Jones, floundered and finished fourth.

At the awards ceremony, Jones rescued Li from a pack of snapping reporters by pulling her to the top of the podium beside her. Through an interpreter and her tears, Li relayed to Jones that she would never forget her sportsmanlike gesture.

So it's not just Jones's running that sets her apart. Jackie Joyner-Kersee, upon being thumped by Jones in the long jump at the Trials, acknowledged as much.

``Marion has the ability to be the ultimate champion,'' Joyner-Kersee said. ``She epitomizes what athletics should be about.''

Coming from the queen of track fans' hearts, Joyner-Kersee's words carried the weight of a title. Then there's the opinion voiced by John Carlos, the Olympic bronze medalist in the 200 meters in 1968.

``Marion,'' Carlos said at a reunion of U.S. track-and-field Olympians during the Trials, ``is a gift from God to the sport.''

God, then, would appear to have the relay baton exchange down pat. Jones, an African-American, is coming of age after Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods and Lisa Leslie helped turn corporate America colorblind.

In 1968, Wyomia Tyus, a soft-spoken woman of African-American ancestry, became the first athlete of either sex to win the 100-meter dash in back-to-back Olympics. After cementing her place in history, she didn't receive near the attention that has been lavished on Jones for pursuing her space in the record books.

According to one of Tyus' teammates on the 1968 Olympic team, the proliferation since then of media outlets doesn't entirely account for the very different experiences of Tyus and Jones.

``We were in a very racially intense situation,'' said Madeline Manning, the Olympic champion in the 800 meters in Mexico City. ``Wyomia being a black American, she didn't get the notice she should have.''

Thirty-two years later, Jones isn't lacking for exposure any more than she is wanting for speed. In the past few months she has been featured in publications as disparate as TV Guide and Harper's Bazaar, ESPN: The Magazine and Rolling Stone.

Inquiring minds want to know what's next, a cover story in Road and Track on Jones' sixth gear?

Jones is reported to be track and field's $7 million woman on the strength of endorsement deals with Nike, Gatorade and General Motors. The tribal council otherwise known as Madison Avenue voted her the Olympics survivor long before the complete cast of competitors was chosen.

There's a downside to being built up as the Summer Games' biggest winner before the Olympic flame is lit. The attention can lead to expectations as overblown as the ads along Sunset Boulevard.

If the world anticipates five gold medals, what happens if Jones, in her Olympics debut, falters in the long jump, an event that has given her fits all year? What if she pulls up lame in the 200 meters with back spasms as she did at last year's World Championships in Seville, Spain?

Sometimes when you push the envelope of performance, after all, the envelope pushes back. No one appreciates that more than Jones, who had to sit out the 1996 Olympics after breaking her foot twice in the months leading up to the U.S. Olympic selection meet.

If Jones wins two gold medals, a silver and a bronze, will her Games be considered a bust? It could happen. It did did happen in 1968 to Mark Spitz, the last U.S. Olympic athlete for whom unprecedented greatness was preordained.

In the two years before the Mexico City Games, Spitz dominated swimming with the same heavy hand Jones has ruled track since the summer of 1997. He won 22 national and international titles and broke 10 world records and 28 American records.

Spitz arrived in Mexico City for his first Olympics as the world-record holder in the 100- and 200-meter butterfly. He qualified to compete in five events and was considered a lock to win five gold medals, one more than the most decorated of all swimmers, Don Schollander.

Spitz, then 18, won two golds, a silver and a bronze. He didn't earn a medal in the 200 butterfly, finishing eighth. For four years he was defined not by all his successes but by what he failed to accomplish in Mexico City.

It took seven gold medals and seven world records at the 1972 Olympics for Spitz to restore his legacy. Reached at his L.A.-area home recently, Spitz was asked what advice he'd give Jones for navigating the minefield of expectations.

``Frankly, I think you have to sort of laugh at everything that's being said,'' Spitz said. ``You have to let it go in one ear and out the other. I'd say to give the press a little bit of time, but don't let them control your time. Because if you lose, they'll come at you so fast it'll make your head spin.''

Jones is insulated from outsiders by a man who weighs 300 pounds and comes across as terribly tenacious - until he tenderly refers to Jones as ``my best friend.'' C.J. Hunter is Jones' husband of two years and he is a formidable presence, both on the track, where he is the reigning world champion in the shot put, and at her side.

On the first day of the Trials, Jones was in the interview room after winning her 100-meters heat (the second-fastest all-time performer in the event behind the late Florence Griffith-Joyner, she'd go on the next day to win the final easily). Jones had been answering questions for a few minutes when Hunter walked in and gave her the sign to stop talking.

She stood up and dutifully followed him out of the room without saying another word.

``In this world, particularly in what I do, people are grabbing you,'' Jones told Jay Leno in a ``Tonight Show'' appearance after the Trials. ``C.J.'s very protective of me. He wants to make sure I'm safe.''

Pat McCormick, who won two gold medals in diving when the Summer Games were last held in Australia, in 1956, has observed Jones from afar. She is a big fan of the track star.

``Even though she says she's going to win five gold medals, she has a lot of humility,'' McCormick said. ``I've watched her compete and I've watched her do interviews and she comes across as a very precious person.''

Like most people who are really, really outstanding at what they do, Jones is a perfectionist. If people must know, that's why she sets her goals so high. She's a stickler, not stuck-up.

In Sydney, ``I want to win everything I'm entered in,'' Jones said. ``If something happens and I don't win all five, I'll have to cope with that. But I don't think I could live with myself if I didn't try.''

MARION JONES

Age: 24

Residence: Raleigh, N.C.

College: North Carolina

Past Olympics: None

Highlights: Attempting to win five gold medals . . . will compete in 100 meters, 200, 400 and 1600 relays and long jump . . . competed at Thousand Oaks and Rio Mesa high schools . . . named state high school Division I player of the year in basketball at T.O. . . . helped lead North Carolina to NCAA title as a point guard . . . won 100 World Championships title in '97 and '99.

CAPTION(S):

photo, box

Photo: no caption (Marion Jones)

Box: MARION JONES (see text)