Re: Debbie Ferguson-McKenzie takes shot Marion Jones
On Sat, 23 Aug 2008 21:12:24 +0100, Peter Munn
wrote:
>Leafing through uk.sport.athletics, I read 's message of Thu, 21 Aug
>2008:
>
>>On Aug 21, 10:30 pm, Vick444~No Sp...@aei.ca wrote:
>>
>>> Pressed, she says this is a
>>> reference to Marion Jones, and it seems astounding that
>>> non-U.S. female sprinters are still bitter that Jones
>>> dominated their sport from 1997-2001, but maybe it's
>>> understandable
>>
>>Jones deserves anything said about her. She's a cheater and liar.
>
>Out of interest, does anyone know if the relay medals she contributed
>effort towards were voided, too, or have they been allowed to stand?
The IOC formally stripped Jones and her relay teammates
of their 5 medals.
source wikipedia ...
--
Vick
Marion Jones, winner of three gold and two bronze medals
for the United States, relinquished them in October 2007
after confessing that she had taken tetrahydrogestrinone
(THG) from September 2000 through July 2001.The IOC
formally stripped Jones and her relay teammates of their
5 medals, although her teammates were to be offered
opportunity to present a case for retaining their medals.
Jones was also banned from competing for two years by the
IAAF.
The IOC and IAAF stripped Jones of all medals, points and
results received after September 1, 2000 after Jones
admitted to using steroids prior to the 2000 Summer
Olympics. Jones is also not allowed to attend the 2008
Beijing Olympic Games.
In October 2007, Jones admitted she doped, having taken
steroids before the Sydney 2000 Summer Olympics and
acknowledged that she had, in fact, lied when she
previously denied steroid use in statements to the press,
to various sports agencies, and - most significantly - to
two grand juries, one impaneled to investigate the BALCO
"designer steroid" ring, and the other impaneled to
investigate a check fraud ring involving many of the same
parties from the BALCO case. As a result of these
admissions, Jones accepted a two-year suspension from
track and field competition, and announced her retirement
from track and field on October 5, 2007. The United
States Anti-Doping Agency stated that the sanction "also
requires disqualification of all her competitive results
obtained after September 1, 2000, and forfeiture of all
medals, results, points and prizes". On October 5, 2007,
Jones formally pled guilty to lying to federal agents in
the BALCO steroid investigation in the U.S. District
Court. On January 11, 2008, Jones was sentenced to 6
months in jail. She began her sentence on March 7, 2008.
At the time of her admission and subsequent guilty plea,
Marion Jones was one of the most famous people to be
linked to the BALCO investigation. 41 days later, Major
League Baseball player Barry Bonds was indicted on one
count of obstruction of justice and four counts of
perjury linked to his own testimony before the BALCO
Grand Jury in December of 2003.
Jones is a 1997 graduate of the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill. While there, she met and began
dating one of the track coaches, shot putter C. J.
Hunter. Hunter was forced to resign his position at UNC
due to university rules prohibiting coach/athlete dating.
Jones and Hunter were married October 3, 1998, and
trained for the Sydney 2000 Summer Olympics with their
new athletic coach Trevor Graham. Graham would later gain
notoriety for his role in providing both athletes with
Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO) designer
steroids ("The Cream", "The Clear"), undetectable at the
time, as well as providing a sample of BALCO's most
successful product ("The Clear") to the United States
Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), where it was identified as
tetrahydrogestrinone (THG) and a detection method was
developed.
In the run-up to the 2000 Olympics, all eyes were on
Marion Jones, who had announced at a press conference
during her pre-Olympic book-signing tour that she
intended to win gold medals in all five of her
competition events at Sydney. Lost in the hoopla and the
publicity was a low-key announcement that Jones' husband
C. J. Hunter had quietly withdrawn from the Shot Put
competition due to a knee injury, though he was allowed
to keep his coaching credentials and attend the games to
support his wife. However, just hours after Marion Jones
won her first of the planned five golds, the IOC
announced that Hunter had failed no fewer than four
pre-Olympic drug tests, testing positive each time for
the banned anabolic steroid nandrolone. Hunter was
immediately suspended from taking any role at the Sydney
games, and he was ordered to surrender his on-field
coaching credentials. At a press conference where Hunter
broke down in tears as a subdued Marion Jones sat by his
side, Hunter denied taking any performance enhancing
drugs at all, much less the easily-detected nandrolone
(which showed up in all four tests in amounts over 1000
times normal levels); Victor Conte of BALCO, who was
regularly supplying "nutritional supplements" to Graham's
athletes, blamed the test results on "an iron supplement"
that contained nandrolone precursors and tied previous
positive nandrolone tests from Jamaican sprinter Merlene
Ottey and British sprinter Linford Christie to the same
supplement. As late as 2004, Hunter was still denying the
charges and was attempting to gain access to the results
to see if they could be analyzed further. Jones would
later write in her autobiography, Marion Jones: Life in
the Fast Lane, that Hunter's positive drug tests hurt
their marriage and her image as a drug-free athlete. The
couple divorced in 2002.
On June 28, 2003, Marion Jones gave birth to a son, Tim
Montgomery Jr., with then-boyfriend Tim Montgomery, a
world class sprinter himself. Because of her pregnancy,
Jones missed the 2003 World Championships, but spent a
year preparing for the 2004 Olympics. Montgomery, who did
not qualify for the 2004 Olympic Track and Field team due
to poor performance, was charged by USADA, as part of the
investigation into the BALCO doping scandal, with
receiving and using banned performance enhancing drugs
and sought a four-year suspension for Montgomery.
Montgomery fought the ban but lost the appeal on December
13, 2005, receiving a two-year ban from track and field
competition; the Court for Arbitration of Sport (CAS)
also stripped Montgomery of all race results, records,
medals, etc., from March 31, 2001 onward. Montgomery
later announced his retirement. The investigation into
Montgomery's illegal substance use once more called into
question Marion Jones' own protests about not using
steroids and never having been tested positive for
steroids, especially in light of former trainer Trevor
Graham's increasingly visible role in the BALCO case.
On February 24, 2007, Marion Jones married Barbadian
sprinter and 2000 Olympic medalist (bronze, 100 m sprint)
Obadele Thompson. Their first child together was born in
July 2007.
Then in Sydney, Jones told the press that she was aiming
for five gold medals. As it was considered a possibility
by fans and pundits alike, she was a media darling during
the Olympics. However, she finished with three golds and
two bronzes, still an astonishing feat which had never
been achieved by a female athlete before. She was later
stripped of these medals after admitting that she used
performance-enhancing drugs at the time. Her ex-husband
Hunter, an Olympic shot-putter and confessed steroid
user, testified under oath that he had seen her inject
drugs into her stomach in the Olympic Village in Sydney,
and her coach Trevor Graham was involved in a major drug
scandal that broke in 2005, which implicated baseball
player Barry Bonds, sprinters Tim Montgomery, Chryste
Gaines, Kelli White, and others, many of whom admitted to
using illegal drugs while competing. Jones vehemently
denied using performance-enhancing drugs until her
confession in 2007.
date: Mon, 25 Aug 2008 04:06:47 GMT
author: Vick444~No Spam~@aei.ca
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