The US Olympic Trials. People saying hello. People saying goodbye. Lots of tears in between. Sometimes you have to pack away your cynicism about what everybody is taking and just roll along for the drama.

Marion Jones comes into the press tent and skips onto the podium. She gives Jackie Joyner-Kersee a playful, consoling punch on the arm. Joyner-Kersee smiles wanly.

For all the hoopla, for all the hype, Marion Jones is just arriving. This past weekend represented the first time she has been on an Olympic team. It was hard to make her mood rhyme with that of her hero who was lingering with the long goodbye.

Whatever it was that prompted Jackie Joyner-Kersee to come out of retirement and hit the long jump runway again seemed to have cleared up quickly.

"I ain't never doin' it again," she said afterwards, "not even in masters competitions. You can all tell Bobby that."

Bob Kersee, husband and coach, nodded from the sidelines. There would be no fifth trip to the Olympics for his wife, no addition to the collection of six medals. At 38 she was putting the final punctuation mark on an epic poem of a career.

So she disappears into the tranquillity of retirement, having come sixth in a competition she needed to comes first, second or third in. If there was regret wrapped up in the losing, there was consolation too. Jackie Joyner-Kersee's hours in the Sacramento sun were one long love affair with her public.

"I was taking more jumps than I could afford to out there," she said, "but I've never experienced a track crowd like that in America."

Her hamstring began to complain after she took her fourth jump, and by then she hadn't pushed herself beyond the 22-foot mark. A sense of the inevitable set in.

In the end she fouled out on her sixth and final attempt but not before the world around her had stopped what it was doing in an attempt to will her to Sydney.

From Marion Jones, who overcame two fouls to win the competition on her fifth jump, there was nothing but the respect and admiration she has always carried for her hero.

"You know," she said, "when Jackie was on the runway for the last time out there, it all stood still. All of the jumpers, all of the fans stood still while she was on the runway.

"You watch her all the time just to make sure you don't miss something magical or historical. To most of us she will always be the greatest."

And with a sense of timing that many thought had deserted her out on the runway, Jackie Joyner-Kersee rose and said goodbye.

"It's time for me to go back to what I was doing, before I came here. The others deserve to go. I deserve to go home."