Michael Jones always had Olympic dreams.
He was a swimmer on the same national team as Mark Spitz, who in 1972 won seven Olympic gold medals, but Jones didn’t qualify for the games.
He went to college and law school and became a sports agent (think “Jerry Maguire’’). Later on, he became a professor at the University of New Hampshire and a part-time trial court judge.
In 1983, Jones, of Billerica and Cape Cod, joined the faculty of the University of Massachusetts Lowell, where he still teaches sports, entertainment, and art law. He’s written several books, the most recent “Rules of the Game: Sports Law.’’
Along the way, Jones, now 65, kept swimming, running, and became an elite triathlete. He still trains daily with his wife Christine, 47, also a triathlete.
He stayed connected with the Olympics by serving with its national governing bodies as a hearing officer for nondrug-related offenses.
It was that connection, and the memory of the Olympic team posters that were popular in the 1960s and 1970s, that prompted him to ask the Olympic Committee if it was still commissioning art.
With a background in painting, he submitted some ideas and was selected to create a Team USA Triathlon poster for Athens in 2004, Beijing in 2008, and London in 2012.
Jones’s latest commission is for the 2016 Olympics this summer in Rio de Janeiro.
“In terms of style and message and symbols, I was free to create as I chose,’’ he said.
The 2016 poster is a nine-color screen print based on an original painting by Jones. It was printed in a limited edition of 150, with the majority of posters going to the athletes and Olympic Committee members.
“I have a requirement that all the triathletes that make the team are guaranteed a poster, and I have signed those for them,’’ said Jones.
“The moral of the story is that not all first dreams come true,’’ he said. “I have made it into the Olympics now as an artist, which is amazingly fulfilling notwithstanding my quest to make it as an athlete.’’
WENDY KILLEEN
Wendy Killeen can be reached at wdkilleen@gmail.com.
