Sally Pearson is not the biggest thing in women's hurdles, and a 100m
gold medal won't change that. Sally Pearson wins, Lolo Jones sells Athletics.
The American was the second fastest qualifier in the heats
behind Pearson today, after just barely making the team
Athletics. She won a
couple of
world indoor titles but her main peak came when she clipped
the second to last hurdle in Beijing while leading the
Olympic final and
stumbled into seventh place. She was at that time very fast and a very
good thing to win gold having recorded the quickest time before the
Olympics. But she didn't win, she stumbled and lost.
She lets her sport do the talking, but it tells a less engaging narrative than Jones life
It is a familiar pretty female
sports star ''
sex sells'' story except
she has given it a teasingly contradictory twist by declaring ''NO SEX HERE''. She announced on Twitter that she was a virgin and was intending
to remain chaste until a ring was on her finger. She has done
interviews subsequently speaking openly about her virginity and
describing it as harder work than her degree and Olympic training.
Why we know this much of an athlete is part of the Lolo Jones story that
is intertwined with the reality of modern media - we shouldn't care but
do, we shouldn't be interested but we are.
''I don't care what anyone else is getting,'' she said before the Games.
''You can talk about all that, but you've still got to mention my name.
