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American Dawn Harper won the women's 100m hurdles Tuesday in Beijing after teammate Lolo Jones clipped a hurdle and surrendered what appeared to be a sure victory.

Jones -- a former LSU Lady Tiger -- staggered to a seventh-place finish. The third American, Damu Cherry, finished fourth.

Jones had taken the lead and seemed to be pulling away when she hooked her right foot on the ninth hurdle and broke her stride, falling from first to seventh. The late blunder opened the door for teammate Dawn Harper to win the U.S. track team's third gold medal of the games.


"I felt the gold around me," Jones said, "but if you can't finish the race, you don't deserve to be the champion.

"I usually hit a hurdle twice a year. It just sucks that it was on the most important race of my life."

While Harper did a victory lap carrying the American flag, Jones kneeled on the track, her face to the ground in stunned disbelief.

Harper finished in a personal-best 12.54 seconds. Australia's Sally McLellan and Canada's Priscilla Lopes-Schliep followed in 12.64.

Jones was the kid who lived in a church basement, worked at a hardware store and as a waitress to pay bills as an adult and was looking to cap her classic American comeback story with a gold in Beijing.

The story was going to form until she struck the ninth hurdle, then stumbled toward the finish. Her eyes opened wide when she hit that hurdle -- yes, that really happened -- and then, after she crossed the finish line, she thrust her fists to her sides, fell to the track, removed her sunglasses and glared up at the scoreboard in disbelief.

"It was like racing a car at max velocity," Jones said. "When you hit a curve, you either maintain control or you crash and burn. Today, I crashed and burned. I'm shocked and sad. But I'm happy for the girls."

Instead of as an Olympic champion, Jones will now be remembered along with Gail Devers, who was winning at the Barcelona Games in 1992 but crashed on the final hurdle and finished fifth.

"I kind of felt like she was me for a minute there," Devers said. "It's heartbreaking, because I saw her face afterward. I know the feeling. I know how she felt."

The evening in track concluded with multiple disappointments for the Americans. In the race before Jones' stumble, 400m favorite Sanya Richards faded in the home stretch with a leg cramp. She finished with a bronze.

Both Richards and Jones were seen crying beneath the stadium after leaving the track.