Then, she screamed.
Her face contorted in agony, Tomas threw up her arms and dropped to the ground, clutching her right hamstring next to the sign marking 41 kilometers - barely a half-mile to the finish of the 26.2-mile race, arguably the most grueling event in the Olympics. It was a torturous scene that played out long after the television cameras had departed, Tomas sitting there, minute after agonizing minute, desperately rubbing her leg and wincing, trying to stretch and holding back tears while other runners such as Ireland's Pauline Curley ran past, seemingly taking her Olympic dreams with them.
"I just said, 'Oh my God, so close,'" Curley said. "'This couldn't have happened to her.' . . . So close to the finish line and just to be like that. It must have been horrific for her out there."
It was.
A doctoral student in linguistics at the University of Utah, the 31-year-old Tomas already had worried about her prospects for the race.
Only six runners among the 81 who started at Tiananmen Square had run slower qualifying marathons than Tomas, a native of Slovakia whose best time was still nearly a half-hour off the world record - the holder of which was among the international elites she would be running against. She jokingly had fretted that organizers would close the gates to the stadium before she arrived to finish there, and feared what she might have to say to people when they asked if she had won a medal.
"For the rest of my life," she wrote on her blog, "I may have to say, 'No, actually, I was last.' "
Yet for most of the race, that was not a concern.
Though she had to make a bathroom stop just past the halfway point, Tomas felt strong, her breathing easy as she knocked out 6:15 miles. The weather was nearly ideal, too, overcast with a few drops of rain, the heat and humidity nowhere near as bad as they had been the previous week.
"It couldn't be a better day," she said.
Until . . .
Tomas felt the first sharp pain in her leg with just about two miles to go, running respectably in 59th place and catching up to a few women in front of her. "I just had to stop," she said. "I could not move."
"It never happened to me, my whole life," she added. "So when it happened on kilometer 39 with two miles to go, I thought for sure I was done. I thought there was no way. I never felt pain like that running in my whole life. I don't understand what happened. I was drinking every station, I was taking three gels. I don't understand why I got such bad cramps."
After massaging her leg and stretching, Tomas was able to continue, shuffling along, trying to be gentle and hoping the hamstring would hold up. Just a few more minutes to go. But then, her goal finally in sight after nearly three hours of running - winner Constantina Tomescu of Romania had long since crossed the finish line in glory - it happened again, and down she went.
"When I was sitting there, looking at the stadium and I just couldn't move because it was just pulling so strong, I didn't think I was going to finish the race," Tomas said later. "I said to myself, 'Even if it takes me a half an hour, I just have to give myself a chance to finish.' "
Said Curley: "I would have crawled."
By then, a police motorcycle had stopped next to Tomas, and photographers moved in to get their shots. Spectators had begun to crowd back around, craning to watch the drama and shouting encouragement intermittently, as if not wanting to intrude on her private agony.
"Jia-you!" they shouted, imploring her each time she tried to rise.
Finally, Tomas struggled to her knees, then to her feet.
In a quintessential Olympic moment, a great cheer went up, and she started walking again. Gently, a few hesitant steps. The hamstring was calming down. Tomas rubbed it once more and broke into the tenderest jog, setting about covering the last 1,000 meters of the biggest race of her life.
When she reached the stadium gate moments later, it was open.
"That was probably the most magical moment of my whole Olympics," she said. "I went through that gate knowing that whatever happens, I have only one lap to go, and I will finish this race. That I think was the first time . . . that I really believed I was going to finish."
Soon, she was inside the stadium, never breaking from her carefully shortened stride while jogging the final lap in front of thousands of cheering fans.
Tomescu had won the gold some 25 minutes earlier, and all but two of the other runners who had remained in the race also had crossed the line, but Tomas did not care. She tried to raise her arms in celebration across the line, only to have her snapping hamstring yank them down again. Later, after limping to the media area and giving an interview to Slovakian television, she would say that it was "beautiful" that other runners had offered encouragement as they passed her lying cramped on the pavement.
Then she knelt, rolled over the track, and laid there as medical personnel hurried to her side and tried - unsuccessfully - to put her on a stretcher.
"Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong today," she said.
Not everything.
She finished the Olympic marathon, in 2 hours, 49 minutes and 39 seconds. She came in 67th place. She did not finish last.
