Seven years ago Marion Jones went to the Sydney Olympics with the world at her
blisteringly quick feet. A would-be queen on her way to the coronation. On
Friday afternoon Jones stood outside a court-house in Westchester County,
New York, and spoke through tears that trickled down her cheeks. “It is,”
she said, “with a great amount of shame that I stand before you and tell you
I have betrayed your trust.”
The coronation happened in Sydney. She returned with five medals, three of
them gold, and in one of the most acclaimed Olympiads of all, she was the
brightest star. With the medals, the fame and the looks, the future promised
nothing but reward.
Instead, she is now looking at jail time and searching for compassion. “Saying
that I’m deeply sorry might not be enough,” she said. “I want to ask you for
forgiveness. I have asked almighty God for forgiveness.”
Elements of the truth about Jones have come out because she lied to federal
investigators during a 2003 investigation into Balco, the San Francisco
laboratory at the centre of a performance-enhancing drug-trafficking
business. Jones was one of Balco’s clients and such was the documentary and
witness evidence against her that her original denials were not credible.
The federal investigators believed they could prove that Jones had lied and
she was in court on Friday on charges of having twice committed perjury. She
told Judge Kenneth M Karas a very different story from the one she had spun
for the investigators four years ago. Jones told the court she took steroids
from September 2000 to July 2001, although she insisted that she thought she
was taking flaxseed oil. “I consumed this substance several times before the
Sydney Olmpics and continued using it afterward,” she said. “By November
2003 I realised he [her coach, Trevor Graham] was giving me
performance-enhancing drugs.”
She also admitted that while using this prohibited substance, she felt
different, trained more intensely, recovered quicker and produced better
times. In other words, whatever she achieved during this period would have
no value.
All through the controversy that followed the discovery of the deception being
perpetrated by those who masterminded the Balco operation – founder Victor
Conte and his chemist Patrick Arnold – Jones protested her innocence. In
2004 she said: “I have never, ever used performance drugs.”
She lied. She even had the brazenness to sue Conte, who testified that he had
seen her inject herself. Outside the courtroom, she was contrite. “I have
been dishonest and you have the right to be angry with me,” she said. “I
have let [my family] down. I have let my country down and I have let myself
down.”
Part of the sadness in this story is that there is very little sadness.
Jones’s admissions, part of her plea agreement with federal prosecutors, do
not come as a surprise. From the moment details of the Balco investigation
came into the public domain, we strongly suspected that she had cheated and,
weary beyond belief, we had heard all those denials before and they were as
hollow from her as from so many others. The betrayal of trust did not start
and end with Marion Jones.
Try to remember how you felt when Ben Johnson exploded off the blocks in Seoul
19 years ago, or when Linford Christie won the same Olympic 100m title in
Barcelona four years later, or how you reacted to the gloriously implausible
Michelle Smith winning three gold medals in the pool at the Atlanta Games of
1996.
Now try to recall the effect of discovering that Johnson’s urine sample
contained stanozolol, that the ageing Christie later produced a sample laden
with nandrolone and that Smith’s urine came up smelling of whisky.
To understand the absurdity of the lengths to which elite athletes will go to
cover their tracks, consider what the drug testers Al and Kay Guy discovered
on the fateful Saturday morning they turned up to take a urine sample from
Smith at her County Kilkenny home. At first she said she was dashing off to
the airport and didn’t have the time to provide a sample. They said they
would travel with her to the airport and she could give it there. So she
agreed to give one at her home.
She then disappeared from their sight and gave the sample on her return. They
divided the sample in her presence, an A and a B, but felt something wasn’t
quite right. When they got into their car to make the return journey to
their home in Dublin, Al Guy said to his wife. “What did you make of that?”
“It smelt like Irish Mist to me,” replied Kay.
“No,” he said, “it was Southern Comfort.”
Smith was banned for four years.
So many tainted champions had preceded her that the chances are you weren’t
quite so riveted when Jones got round to winning her three gold medals at
the Sydney Games. Once that trust has been violated, the damage is not
easily repaired. Jones won three gold and two bronze medals in Sydney, but
they are now without value. It is certain that the International Olympic
Committee will strip her of her title, but it insists she keep the medals,
for they will be an eternal reminder of her deception.
There will be a natural inclination to sympathise with Jones. It was notable
that as she stood outside the courtroom last week, members of the public
cheered her and generally expressed their support. She possessed a lot of
athletic talent, she was an outgoing and affable woman and her charisma came
with a hint of emotional vulnerability. Symptoms of the vulnerability were
never difficult to pinpoint.
This is a woman who married one of her early coaches, the shot-putter CJ
Hunter, and then stood by him when it was revealed that he was a drug cheat.
That news came during the Sydney Olympics, when Jones was running so fast.
She was beauty, he was the beast, and she sat beside him at the press
conference when he answered questions about his multiple positive tests. Of
course, he pleaded his innocence. You might have frowned at Jones’s choice
of partner, but you secretly admired her loyalty. Soon after they returned
to America, they separated. It was indicated that Jones could not stay
attached to a man who cheated by using performance-enhancing drugs.
She then fell in with the sprinter Tim Montgomery, who was also a fellow Balco
client and involved in a cheque fraud scam that would eventually implicate
Jones. The woman who had once seemed unbeatable on the track was struggling
with life on the street.
Any sympathy should be qualified by the certainty that her “confession” has
come because she knew that persevering with the lie would probably lead to a
longer jail sentence. Because she is cooperating with her accusers, she will
spend a maximum of six months in prison, although the sentencing judge has
the right to reduce it further.
Nor would sympathy be the appropriate response for a woman who offers up not
the truth, but slices of the truth. For example, she insists she did not
know she was taking “the clear” and that she believed Graham when he told
her it was flaxseed oil. Please.
Jones admits that Graham also told her she must not tell anyone she was using
this substance, and says now that she should have suspected something was
amiss when he told her to keep it quiet. Alarms bells might also have rung
when Graham gave her this substance in the form of two single drops
underneath the tongue.
There has always been a considerable body of evidence against Jones.
Conte has testified that he saw Jones inject herself with banned
performance-enhancing drugs.
Hunter has testified that he injected her with performance-enhancing drugs,
and one Angel Guillermo Heredia testified that he supplied her with drugs
and a doping plan. On doping-related documents seized during a raid on
Balco, the initials MJ are taken to refer to Jones.
When the Balco evidence pointed overwhelmingly to Jones being a doper, she
denied it. Everybody else, Conte, Heredia, and Hunter, was she implied,
lying. After telling her lies to federal investigators, she returned to the
track last year and seemed to be back in form.
She talked about competing at next year’s Beijing Olympics and then tested
positive for EPO. Claiming innocence, she was exonerated when the B-test of
her sample failed to confirm the original result. Antidoping officials
believed that she had escaped on a technicality.
There was one piece of news in this latest instalment of the Marion Jones
story that was not tinged by sadness; that was her decision to retire from
the sport. She would have been banned in any case, but perhaps that was one
concession to which she was entitled – the right to go before being pushed.
For us, the one-time fans, it was time to say: “So long, Marion.”
Jones’s tale
2000 Marion Jones wins five medals at the Sydney Olympics
2003 Jones is among athletes testifying to a federal grand jury in the
Balco case. She denies any involvement
2004 She sues Victor Conte, the head of Balco, for £13m after he
accuses her of using drugs
2006 She tests positive for EPO but is cleared on a B sample
2007 Jones pleads guilty to lying to federal investigators about her
use of steroids. She faces a possible jail term of six months. She will be
sentenced in January
