| Page 2 of 2 < |
Jones Pleads Guilty, Admits Using Steroids
Marion Jones, a three-time Olympic track and field gold medalist, speaks to the media outside U.S. District Court in White Plains, N.Y.
(Daniel Barry - Bloomberg)
TOOLBOX
   Resize
COMMENT
 Discussion Policy
 CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
Who's Blogging  |
"It's terrible what she's done to the sport," Davies said in a telephone interview. "She's dragging track and field through the mud."
Her fate rests in the hands of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, which is likely to bring a case against Jones in the coming weeks. Though the two-year ban she would face would be irrelevant given her retirement from the sport, the case would provide a basis for the International Olympic Committee to strip her of her Olympic medals and for other results to be nullified. U.S. Anti-Doping Agency chief executive Travis Tygart flew from the agency's headquarters in Colorado Springs to attend Friday's hearing.
Tygart declined to discuss her situation in particular, but said: "Anytime an athlete admits in open court to doping offenses, clean athletes expect USADA to hold them accountable. We fully intend to do that, even if it means removing medals from the Olympic Games."
The clear, also known as THG, is the powerful steroid at the center of the four-year-old investigation into the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, a Burlingame, Calif.-based lab known as Balco that supplied steroids and other drugs to dozens of professional athletes. Jones represents the sixth conviction in the case, and the first athlete. Two officials from Balco, a sports trainer, a coach and a chemist have entered guilty pleas since 2004.
Graham, Jones's coach, was charged with three counts of lying to federal agents. His case goes to trial Nov. 26 and Jones is expected to be called as a witness. Echoing what she wrote in her letter, she said in court Friday that she did not know the substance he gave her was a steroid at the time she took it.
"I consumed this substance several times before the Sydney Games and continued using it afterward," she told the judge. "By November 2003, I realized Graham had given me a performance-enhancing drug."
Jones told the judge she lied to Balco investigators during a meeting on Nov. 4, 2003, when she denied using performance-enhancing drugs. She also said she lied to New York investigators in two separate meetings about a $25,000 check she received from Montgomery, who pleaded guilty for his role in a check-fraud scheme earlier this year.
