SYDNEY – In the glow of a just-completed 100-meter victory and with an approaching storm not yet in sight, Marion Jones lectured Saturday that she was not feeling pressure in her five gold-medal quest.

“I’m having a ball,” she had said smiling. “This is not a stressful time in my life. It is a happy time in my life.”

On the track today for the first time since then, Jones’ perception of her pursuit and the world’s perception of her has changed, perhaps, forever.

Jones, her husband’s drug scandal having washed over her, ran without threat in Round 1 of the 200 meters. She easily advanced to what will be a more complicated evening. By the time you wake up and read this, Jones was scheduled to have run a second heat of the 200 and try to qualify in the long jump, her poorest individual event.

And everything is more complicated now for her, since it was revealed Monday by the IOC and the IAAF (track and field’s world governing body) that her husband, shot putter C.J. Hunter, had tested positive for a banned steroid from four separate drug tests administered in July.

At a press conference yesterday, Jones admitted this had become “a difficult time” for her.

The U.S. Olympic Committee initially said it would give Hunter a coaching pass to be able to be downstairs during Jones’ events. But under pressure from the IOC not to have Hunter near competitors, the USOC said each athlete receives two tickets for family and that Hunter could use those tickets.

But Hunter had somehow gotten into the area restricted to the media. He was sitting in Aisle 139, Row 28, Seat 30, about 75 feet from the finish line.

USOC spokesman Mike Moran said the organization had “made public tickets available to him for the stadium.” These would not allow Hunter to sit in a media area.

When told Hunter was sitting in that area, Moran said, “you are telling me something I do not know and it would not be fair for me to comment.”

An IOC spokeswoman also said her organization was unaware Hunter was sitting with the media.

Hunter, who yesterday said “I will not hang my head” and would be present when his wife competed, had no credential showing in an area where the guards have been quite strict with media to always clearly have passes on chains hanging from their necks.

For most of the time he sat in this area, Hunter had a black baseball cap pulled low, the collar of his off-white windbreaker pulled up and his shoulders hunched so that not much of his round, bearded face showed. Still, it was impossible to miss a 6-foot-2, 330-pound man amid the world press.

When Hunter and Jones began dating while she was still a star point guard at the University of North Carolina, Hunter was known to sit for the entirety of practices by himself, unsmiling up in the bleachers. His mood was much similar here as he switched his focus from the track for heats of the men’s 200 to a television showing the Taekwondo competition.

When several media members approached him, Hunter said he wished there would be no gathering because “I’m not supposed to be here.”

Jacques Rosse, the vice chairman of the IOC’s medical commission, had said yesterday, “If this man has committed a doping offense, it’s moral and ethical to take away the accreditation and say, ‘sir, you have no place here.’ “

Hunter flicked channels just prior to his wife’s heat and watched as she waltzed through in 22.75 seconds. As soon as the race concluded, Hunter rose and departed, heading toward the warm-up track to meet her.

Asked about his inability to be downstairs as usual for Jones, Hunter said, “She doesn’t need me down there. I’m not her coach.”

Jones is usually bubbly in public, even after a race. But this time she walked through a barricaded tunnel in a more subdued manner. She told a journalist, “I said all along this was going to be my most important day.”

But she could not imagine it being made more important for the kind of outside reasons that now exist. Hunter had pulled out of the Olympics in early September, citing the need for knee surgery. Yet, his presence has been mammoth.

Yesterday, Jones and Hunter held a press conference. Jones said she was standing by Hunter and that she wanted to be left alone until these Games conclude.

Hunter, through choked words and tears, professed his innocence and said he would never do anything to damage his wife’s five-gold chances.