SACRAMENTO – The long jump turned into the pit and the pendulum.

Age was the menacing pendulum to Jackie Joyner-Kersee’s dream of flying gloriously into the

sand pit one more time. And the long jump itself was the menacing blade threatening to cut off Marion Jones’ five-gold dream 60 days before the Sydney Olympics even began.

In the end yesterday, Joyner-Kersee simply could not stop the effects of being 38. She had legend, but not enough legs. Jones, on the other foot, turned potential athletic calamity into further proof that she has the steely focus and will to pursue the magical.

Jones won the long jump at the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials to earn her second berth on the American team. Joyner-Kersee merely won a final, appreciative ovation from a Hornet Stadium crowd that had come to see if she could turn back younger competition and the clock. In a sport filled with selfish prima donnas, JJK’s final graceful act was not in mid-air, but at her post-event press conference when she smiled without force, thanked everyone and was sincerely supportive of those who had beaten her.

“I could never be disappointed because I have been on four Olympic teams,” said Joyner-Kersee, who has won six Olympic medals, three of them gold. “This was a long shot. I believed I could put it together for this one competition. The other jumpers deserved to move on. I deserve to go home.”

Amazingly, there was a moment in the competition when it was possible JJK was going to have a better long-jump chance at Sydney than Jones.

Twelve competitors had advanced from qualifying Friday to yesterday’s final. There were three initial jumps yesterday that would determine a final eight for three more jumps. Jones, a powerful swan as a sprinter, is an awkward and inconsistent leaper, and the pre-Trial feeling was this was the one event that could sabotage her big summer plans. And then Jones fouled in her first two jumps, putting her one more foul or lousy leap away from despair.

“After the second jump, I saw the red (penalty) flag and for the blink of an eye, I thought, ‘one more foul and my dream is over,'” Jones said.

But Jones gazed toward her coach and her husband, and gained strength from their confident looks. And she also had a conversation with her idol, Joyner-Kersee. Essentially, JJK told Jones that as long as she did not foul, she would jump far enough to assure advancement to the final eight. She needed to go 20-10 and soared 22-1 3/4.

“That’s what great athletes do,” said Bobby Kersee, Joyner-Kersee’s husband and coach. “They rise to the challenge.”

And great athletes capitalize when given new life. Liberated from the pressure of not making the final eight, Jones took the lead in the fourth round, saw Dawn Burrell go ahead and then took the lead for good in the fifth round with a jump of 23-0 1/2, her best of 2000.

Jones, who won the 100 on Saturday, now will rest until the 200 qualifying next weekend. She is trying to become the first woman track athlete to win five golds in an Olympics, covering the 100, 200, long jump and two relays.

There will be no more medal-stand challenges for Joyner-Kersee. She did not jump well in her fourth jump and, worse, felt a tightness in her left hamstring. Joyner-Kersee had been retired since July 1998 before being motivated by her husband in April to try to make one last Olympic team. But she never took a full-out long jump in preparation for these Trials, hoping to conserve her body.

Guile and fortitude were enough to defy gravity and age Friday. But, in the finals, she was without the resources that earned her the distinction as the greatest female athlete of the 20th century. She decided not to even attempt a jump in the fifth round, wanting to put all her remaining energy into the sixth and final jump. She needed to better 22-6 1/2. But midway into the approach to the jumping board, Joyner-Kersee recognized there was not enough power in her legs to produce the dramatic. She simply ran through the sandpit, ending her athletic career without ever getting off the ground. So Burrell held second and Shana Williams third. Joyner-Kersee went to retirement in sixth place.

“We were not scared to make the attempt and that is what makes a champion,” Bobby Kersee said. “Jackie deserved to be here and not sitting at home and wondering if she could compete at this level.”