EUGENE (Oregon), May 24: Olympic champion Marion Jones will run her first 100 metre race of the season Sunday when she heads the field at the Prefontaine Classic IAAF Grand Prix meeting.

Jones, making her fifth appearance at the IAAF Grand Prix meet, has never lost at the Pre Classic, twice winning the 100m, twice the 200m and twice the long jump.

In the past four years, Jones has won gold in the 100m and 200m at the 2002 Sydney Olympics, and was World Champion at 100m in 1999 and at 200m in 2001.

Her defeat in the 2001 World Championships 100m final — where she was second to Ukrainian Zhanna Pintusevich — was one of the biggest upsets of the year in sports. But Jones bounced back with Golden League victories in Zurich and Brussels and at the Goodwill Games.

On Sunday, Jones is expected to face a field including Olympic bronze medalist Tayna Lawrence of Jamaica, American Latasha Jenkins and Savatheda Fynes of the Bahamas as well as 1999 200m world champion Inger Miller.

Earlier this season Jones won a 400m at the Mt. SAC Relays in Walnut California and anchored a US team to victory in the 4 x 400m relay at the Penn Relays.

The appearance of Jones in the 100m may go some way toward making up for the absence of world record-holder Maurice Greene in any men’s sprint.

Greene, who recently signed a sponsorship deal with adidas, will not compete in the largely Nike-backed Prefontaine, where in 1998 he clocked a wind-aided 9.79sec — precursor to his world record in that same time the following year in Athens.—AFP