"Hey," said Ato Boldon, "I didn't tell you that you could go."

And the journalist swung around and almost saluted involuntarily and Boldon crinkled his face around a big smile.

The sprinters, the preening, strutting thoroughbreds, are the best fun, the best theatre in athletics. They run for 10 seconds and then we, the sturdy buffaloes of the press corps, stampede down to meet them in that combustible place where media and muscles meet, the mixed zone. Now that's exciting.

All evening long yesterday the excitement had built as people chewed on the fact that the men's 100 metres had one of the best fields ever seen and that the women's final had, well, Marion Jones. A good night to be near the muscle.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The muscle actually has so much muscle that it makes you wonder how they came by it, the muscle has so much ego on top that you suspect something is chemically awry. But for 10 seconds on the track, and for an hour afterwards as they uncoil, they are the best entertainment athletics has to offer. Sweaty super-models with lots to say. And great plots . . .

Down in the mixed zone in the wake of the women's 100 metres, for instance, there is no sign of Marion Jones. So we cluster around Zhanna Pintusevich, the bony little Ukrainian who for 30 or so blissful seconds thought that she was the world 100 metres champion. Cruel, cruel, drama.

Zhanna had galloped away with her arms raised, sucking in a lap of honour while the real winner, the now absent Marion Jones, cantered off counter clockwise with a more genuine cause for celebration. Zhanna knew the game was up when the photographers suddenly jilted her like a bunch of cold-hearted cads. In the mixed zone we are more chivalrous.

"I was so happy, so, so happy to have won a medal for Ukraine," said Zhanna, torn between wishing to take the whole thing in good part and the need to cry. "I ran 200 metres very happy then very sad. Very sad. It was a good finish though."

We nod. We keep an eye out for Marion Jones but we keep Zhanna talking. "Yes, second is very good for me," she says, "but not as good as when I was thinking that I was first."

Of course Zhanna, of course. We look at her with sincerity dripping from our jowls. Then Marion Jones appears. Bye bye Zhanna, you're on your own now baby.

Marion Jones has been the eye-popping success of Athens. The new saviour of athletics. Atlanta was perhaps one meet too far for the grand dames of the sprint game, so this summer Jones packed in the college basketball and came out and wiped them all off the face of the earth.

Look at poor Merlene Ottey, the creature from the lost world who bought into a false start last night and ran 50 metres flat out before she realised. Too old. Hearing gone. Time to pack it in, Merlene, before Jeff Goldblum starts stalking you.

"Merlene didn't hear the gun," Marion said politely, "but I have learned that, anything like that, you have to shake it off."

Marion has been a full-time runner since May. Merlene has 13 world championship medals. That's the cruelty which youth inflicts.

Five feet 10 inches with a face as solemnly beautiful as Muhammad Ali's, Marion Jones is an arresting sight as she comes into the mixed zone as conqueror of the world. Flashbulbs pop and TV lights blind her.

Those who know about these things say that Jones is going to do things on the track that no woman has ever done. Yesterday was the start, an astonishing big time debut for a 21-year-old who went to college in North Carolina as a basketball major and who has tried to erase athletics from her thoughts altogether for the last three years.

Jones had been a high school sensation back in California, but when the chance came to play basketball in North Carolina she dropped the spikes and became a point guard. She thought about trying out for the Atlanta Games as a sprinter, but broke a bone in her foot in August 1995 and was forced to give up on the idea.

"I sort of forgot about the track for a few years," said Marion nonchalantly, "but every time there was a big meet on I'd look at it and miss being there and think about it. Then, this year, when I finished college, I decided to give it a try again."

Just like that. Jones can run the 800 metres in 2:10, can cover 40 metres in 4.6 seconds. Yesterday she ran 10.83 for the 100 metres final, whistling as she went.

"Yeah, I felt comfortable. I was relaxed. I'm here to stay for a long time."

Marion is just about getting into her stride with the quotes when the men hunch down at the starting blocks for the 100 metres. En masse we turn away.

They can't stop yapping, the men. They come off and they are coiled so tight they have to talk, talk, talk.

Donovan Bailey and Maurice Green were at it even as they covered the last 10 yards of their semi-final yesterday. Bailey turned his head and eyeballed Greene, just like he did to Frankie Fredericks in Atlanta last year. Greene, reacting with a bit more chutzpah than Fredericks displayed, refused to be spooked and turned and eyeballed Bailey right back while winning in 9.90 seconds.

Maur-eece (as he calls himself. Bit much for a guy from Kansas.) is a class act. He came back out and took Donovan's world title away from him. They're getting so laid back they'll soon be doing 9.80s while rolling joints. Whatever. Maureece was subscribing his success last night to performance enhancing religion.

"I just thank the Lord for giving me the power to do this," he said. "The Lord was helping me to have the grace today."

The Lord has indeed been looking after Maureece. Before the US trials last month, his personal best was over 10 seconds. Last night he ran 9.86 and felt no pain from the groin strain which had been troubling him.

"I have a lot of belief in the Lord," said Maureece. "It was his will tonight."

Donovan Bailey, the muscle with the hustle, is surly in the aftermath. It takes a lot to make a man as rich as Donovan surly, but knowing that it was God's will that he come second is sufficient. As he stalks past, drained of cockiness, he reminds us of General Sedwick, the cocky Brit whose dying words were: "Don't worry men, they couldn't hit an elephant at this dist. . ."

"Greene won and that's about it," said Donovan, the erstwhile fastest man on the planet. Frankie Fredericks is still high-strung and jumpy like a bad-tempered greyhound. Nothing to say.

Tim Montgomery, the surprise third-placed finisher, canters past almost unrecognised shouting back, "I'm going to doping, I'm going to doping." "Piss off then," says a Brit.

The king of the mixed zone, Ato Boldon, with his turbo-charged chops and jive-talking tongue and permanent sunglasses, awaits us. No thanks Ato. Tonight Ato has his tongue in gear but no audience.

"Ya ain't seen nothin' yet," he'd had told journalists as he took his leave of us on Saturday. Ato is such good copy that everybody hoped he was right.

He was wrong. And he was right. No world records went and Ato didn't get anything to bring home, but his pal Maureece of Kansas City had blown everybody away.

Greene trains with Ato in California, and confesses that Boldon's non-stop line of trash talk has reduced him to tears occasionally. Yet their friendship is, ahem, fast. Boldon takes Greene to his Beverly Hills apartment every evening to study tapes of their races and workouts. Maurice evidently watches as Ato chatters. Sometimes they pray together.

God was unavailable for comment on the situation.