The Downfall of Marion Jones

There are athletes who are good and respected in their sports. Then there are athletes who are so good in their sports that they can have their faces grace a box of Wheaties cereals. Marion Jones was the quintessential female athlete in her generation.

Here was a beautiful, ever smiling athlete who had the courage to predict that she would win five gold medals in the Sidney Olympics. She may have finished with only three gold medals and two bronzes, a great achievement, but no one will ever forget her Olympic win where her other competitors were not even in the picture.

Marion Jones was such a great athlete that all she had to do was smile at the camera in an interview with Oprah and state that she did not take any performance enhancing drugs and we all believed her.

She was a multitalented sportswoman who got a scholarship to the University of North Carolina to play basketball. After disappointment in not making the national team, she decided to concentrate on Track and Field. When she won the 100m sprint in the 1997 World Championships in Athens, the world was ready to embrace a new Super star.

Sidney should have been where her critics were laid to rest. Instead her win only provoked further accusations of her using performance enhancing drugs. We were reminded of the high school incident where she was banned for four years for failing to take a random drug test. It took the work of Johnnie Cochran to have the ban lifted.

Guilt by Association

However, she continued to dodge rumors and accusations that were further fueled by her associations. Her coaches, Trevor Graham, Charlie Francis and Steven Riddick were all in some shape and form found to be involved in drug scandals.

The first sign of trouble came in the 2000 Olympics when her husband C.J. Hunter withdrew from the shot put competition claiming that he had a knee injury. It was after Jones had won her first gold medal that the IOC announced that he had failed four pre-Olympic drug tests. With Jones by her side, he denied ever having taken any anabolic steroids.

Marion Jones claimed that this led to their breakup in her autobiography, Marion Jones: Life in the Fast Lane. However, when her boyfriend Tim Montgomery was charged as part of the investigation into the BALCO doping scandal, suspicion was mounting into her involvement.

BALCO Scandal

On December 3, 2004, Victor Conte, the founder of BALCO, in a nationally televised interview started chipping away at Marion Jones clean persona. He claimed to have personally given her five different illegal drugs before, during and after the 2000 Olympics. Further claims were made by her former husband C.J. Hunter who claimed to have seen Jones inject herself with steroids.

She had to withdraw from a meet in Switzerland after rumors spread that she had failed in a doping test. However, as was usually the case, there was no evidence of her using illegal drugs after the B sample was found to be clean.

On October 5th, 2007, her life came tumbling down. At the US District Court of Southern New York, Marion Jones admitted to lying to federal agents about her use of steroids prior to the 2000 Olympics. The world had to endure her tearful and shameful apology for what she termed as betraying her country and herself. Further check fraud charges were laid on her and on January 11, 2008, she was sentenced to 6 months in prison for both charges.

From earning more than $70,000 per race and over $1 million in endorsements, Marion Jones found herself fighting of debt and court judgments and losing all her athletics medals. The Marion Jones downfall is one of the biggest falls from grace in athletics history.

Bookmark this:

Bookmark this page