MILAN - Marion Jones has had a rough 12 months off the track. And her life on the track didn't get any better after Wednesday's sluggish 11.67 runner-up finish at the Grand Prix II meet in Milan.

After her slowest performance since her early-teen days as a bright- eyed California high schooler, there was little Jones, now 29 and with a collection of 66 sub-11 second performances to her credit, could do after her race besides provide a blunt assessment of her performance.

"Not too good," she said, sharing smiles, shrugs and nods of resignation. "It just wasn't a good start at all today."

She offered no excuses, only a frank appraisal.

Running into a 1.4 meter per second headwind wasn't a factor. "I felt it, but it wasn,t, like, 'wow, what a wind.' " Neither was the facility's aging track. "It's a little old. It's not the best, but it's not the worst." The false start by Nigerian Endurance Ojokolo, lined up just outside of Jones, didn,t rattle her all that much either. "That's going to happen in every race."

But something did keep her in the blocks when the gun sounded the second time.

"After the false start I don't know why, I just kind of fell asleep in the blocks, sat there, and once I did that, the race was kind of over from there." Once I got up and running," she continued, "everybody was already two to three steps ahead of me."

Running against modest competition, she did manage to make up significant ground just beyond the halfway point, but still couldn,t catch Bahamian Chandra Sturrup, who won with an equally modest 11.42.

"Once I got off and running I felt that I was able to maintain and pick up a little bit, but that first part of the race hurt me."

Despite the wide differences in outcome, she compared her Milan race favorably with her outing in Hengelo, Netherlands last weekend where she clocked 11.29. "On Sunday, I felt I had a better start. On Sunday, the second part of the race wasn,t as good at today,s race. I think if I can put them together I,ll do okay."

"But now I go back, compete at 'Pre,' and then go home, do more conditioning, and get some stuff together." But perhaps during her drive back to her hotel, further introspection forced her to decide against competing at Saturday,s Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, Ore. where she would face Olympic gold and silver medallists Yuliya Nesterenko and Lauryn Williams. For someone who,s often been accused of making bad decisions, that is certainly a good one.

How the competitive life of the Sydney Olympic golden girl has changed since her return to competition last year after taking a season off to have a child was clearly visible yesterday during and after her first-ever appearance in the low-key Milan competition.

"You come to Europe and you expect to compete in sold out stadiums," she said. "I'm sure it's difficult to sell this one out," she said of a stadium that dates back to the age of Napoleon, "but it was a little quiet."

Those previous appearances in the world's premiere meets --along with appearance fees approaching six figures-- are now a thing of the distant past. According to the Milan rumor mill, her appearance fee here was most likely little more than the first place prize, 2,500 euros, or roughly USD 3,050.

Her life off the track has been dominated by questions that continue to dog her regarding accusations of performance-enhancing drug use by Victor Conte, the center of the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (BALCO) scandal. Jones, who has never tested positive for any banned substance, relentlessly maintains her innocence, and despite a long investigation, she hasn't been formally charged with any wrongdoing.

With a great deal of patience and grace, she continues to field the same questions she,s been asked repeatedly since her name emerged as a possible link to the Balco probe. And she continued to do so after her race. "I don't follow it day by day," she said. "The only time I'm pretty much aware of it is if I,m in an environment like this and am asked about. I don,t wake up in the morning and think about it or go to sleep and that's the last thing on my mind."

After her slowest race since her high school days, there are more immediate concerns for Jones. After performances this spring that can be described as lackluster at best, Jones has unwittingly slowly -- in Milan, very slowly -- shifted the debates that surround her every move from talk of a threatened boycott by major meet organizers and "looming clouds of suspicion" to something a little bit more basic: does she even deserve a lane in the world's premiere races?

Some already believe she doesn't. Jacky Delapierre, director of Lausanne's Athletissima Super Grand Prix, among them.

"If she calls up and says she wants to race for practice and without any appearance money," Delapierre told the BBC, "then that might be possible but she would have to come through a B-race first though."

She'll most likely have just one more chance to prove her detractors wrong, at the U.S. championships in late June where she'll attempt to qualify for her fourth world championship appearance.