It promises to be one of the curiouser sidelines of a crowded sporting year.

Can Marion Jones make it as a top basketball player?

The disgraced former sprinter announced last year that she planned to return to professional sport and hoped to sign a contract to play in the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA).

Reaching the summit of two different sports in the modern age is notoriously difficult, as athletes ranging from basketball legend Michael Jordan to cricketer Sir Ian Botham could probably testify.

Jones’s age - at 34 she is no spring chicken - could also count against her.

In a sense, though, she has already achieved the distinction once, having won a national basketball championship with the University of North Carolina in 1994, where she played point guard.

Her "Illustrated Autobiography" Life in the Fast Lane - a book not without value, in spite of being notable chiefly for including the statement, "I have always been unequivocal in my opinion: I am against performance-enhancing drugs. I have never taken them and I never will take them", printed in red capital letters around 1.6 cms high - contains a vivid description of the dramatic finale to the decisive match against “mighty Louisiana Tech”.

"It was one of the most remarkable moments in basketball I've ever witnessed, let alone had a hand in," Jones concludes.

"It took days for it to sink in that we were the national champs."

I took advantage of a recent trip to North America to ask a coach who has worked with Jones what he thought her prospects were of pulling off a late comeback.

His message basically was that there was no reason why she shouldn't, though he did seem to wonder about the effect that an old foot injury might have.

His point, if I understood correctly, was not that it would hamper her on-court, but that it might make it tougher for her to build up that part of her body into the sort of shape she would need to be in to withstand a physically arduous sport.

Ironically, Jones originally picked up the injury in basketball practice.

As she relates in the book, a team-mate landed on her left foot while diving for a loose ball.

"I knew it was broken right away…

"The X-rays showed a break in the fifth bone of my left foot…

"The UNC surgeon, Dr. Tim Taft, who was famous for preserving Michael Jordan’s knees, performed the surgery.

"Afterward, my fifth metatarsal was held together by a metal screw."

There was worse to come.

"I hadn't been on my feet long when I was doing some drills on a trampoline with some of the other track athletes and came down a little awkwardly, heard a tiny crack and felt an immediate stab of pain.

"The X-rays confirmed that I had indeed broken my left foot again…the same bone in the same place, and I'd managed to bend the pin.

"I had to have surgery again, to have the pin removed and replaced by a bigger pin, have bone marrow from my hip inserted into my foot to encourage the bone to heal, and have another cast fitted.”

Ouch.

The book also contains, in Jones's account of her final year on the UNC team, what amounts to a salutary reminder about the possible physical consequences of playing when not in absolutely tip-top shape.

"I'd gained about ten pounds,” she writes.

"I must have weighed 153 or 154 pounds - and I kept getting little nagging injuries."

The young Jones was able to dunk – not bad for someone who stands 'only' 5ft 10in (1.78m).

"We used to play a little trick to get us an edge," she recalls.

"Imagine you’re playing us, we’re all warming up and suddenly the crowd goes wild.

"You turn round and see four of us dunking the ball again and again and again.

"What could be more intimidating than that?

"You wouldn’t know that I’d just sprayed a little sticky stuff on my hand just for warm-ups so the ball wouldn’t slip."

Finally, the book - published in 2004 - makes clear that the idea of a WNBA career is not just a passing whim, though Jones presumably would not have foreseen the circumstances under which she would be making last year’s announcement.

"I would love to see how I’d rank among the best female basketball players in the world," the chapter on the Lady Tar Heels concludes.

"I don’t know if, by the time 2008 comes around, I’ll have the spunk for it any more or if I’ll even want to deal with traveling and being away from home so much.

"But it is a little personal goal of mine to resume that part of my career someday.”

"Someday" may be just around the corner.

David Owen is a specialist sports journalist who worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering last year's Beijing Olympics. An archive of Owen’s material may be found by Twitter users at www.twitter.com/dodo938