Marion Jones - Drug Cheat

[all_funkt_up]

Well it's official. Marion Jones has come out publically and admitted she did use performance enhancing drugs in the lead up to the Sydney Olympics.

She had previously lied to federal investigators in 2003 when they looked into claims that Jones had cheated her way to gold. She will surely have to hand back her medals now, its got to happen surely?

Does anyone have faith in track and field anymore? Is there any point in having the Olympics only to find out 6 years later that the athletes cheated their way to victory?

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Jones pleads guilty in drug case

US athlete Marion Jones has pleaded guilty to lying about her steroid use to US investigators, which could see her jailed and stripped of her medals. The 31-year-old had previously denied using performance-enhancing drugs ahead of the 2000 Sydney Olympics, where she won five medals - three of them gold.
In court she admitted using a steroid between September 2000 and July 2001, and lying to a federal inquiry in 2003.
After leaving court a tearful Ms Jones said she was retiring from athletics.
"It is with a great amount of shame that I stand before you and tell you that I have betrayed your trust," Ms Jones said after Friday's court hearing.
"Because of my actions I am retiring from the sport of track and field, a sport which I deeply love," she said, admitting she had broken the trust of her fans.
Ms Jones said she was told by her former coach Trevor Graham that she was taking flaxseed oil, a nutritional supplement, when it was actually a steroid known as "the clear".
"By November 2003, I realised he was giving me performance-enhancing drugs," she told the judge at court in New York.
She was ordered to return to court on 11 January for sentencing.
Ms Jones also pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators about a separate cheque fraud case involving her former boyfriend, sprinter Tim Montgomery.
'I am sorry'
"The clear" is a banned drug linked to the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (Balco), a San Francisco-based laboratory at the centre of a steroids scandal in professional sports.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) launched an investigation in December 2004 into doping allegations involving Ms Jones in connection with Balco.

The IOC said on Friday that it would step up its inquiry and move quickly to strip Ms Jones of her medals.
The chairman of the US Olympic Committee, Peter Ueberroth, urged Ms Jones to voluntarily return her medals from the Sydney Olympics, in order to "properly acknowledge the efforts of the vast majority of athletes who choose to compete clean".
Her court appearance comes a day after the Washington Post reported she had sent letters to family and friends apologising for drug use.
"I want to apologise for all of this," the Post quoted her letter as saying. "I am sorry for disappointing you all in so many ways."
The sprinter failed one blood test last year but was cleared of doping when a second test for the blood-booster erythropoietin (EPO) proved negative.

[all_funkt_up]

Lies Lies Lies - when you look back at events with the benefit of hindsight, you just think "you cheeky bitch".

Here's a story about her getting all high and mighty after she was shunned by events organisers in Europe in 2005

Marion Jones has hit out at attempts to stop her competing in Europe - and at athletics' governing body the IAAF for failing to support her.

The US sprint star has been shunned by many of the top meetings in Europe this season because of her links with the Balco doping scandal.

"It's ridiculous an athlete who has not been charged or done anything wrong can be the target of a boycott," she said.

"I've expressed my opinion to this European league and to the IAAF."

She said she was an "eligible athlete" so should have the same chances to compete as any other.

And all the time she knew she was a dirty fucking cheat.

[Peter Orchard]

If memory serves me right she was married to a shot putter who was tossed out of the main events.
Marion Jones has been quite tough in confessing her misdemeanours, in my view, and I just wish the British girl who failed to turn up for the tests had the same balls.

You could take Rio Ferdinand too.

[Winrew]

Three times that British lass missed testing , pleading ignorance and confusion.

Four years time , press conference , sob , sob , i`m sorry ...
Funny thing about the Olympics in Sydney , if they give the medals to the 2nd and 4th place runners , they have both been banned for drugs anyway..
Bloody hell , we could see a Brit getting a medal afterall ...

[Wittmann 44]

Athletics has been a joke for at least 20 years and its only getting worse. I'd say the "dirty" athletes outnumber the "clean" ones now. Its a battle between the chemists now and you'd have to figure they are constantly one step ahead of the testers.

I've zero interest in athletics and swimming in the Olympics. How can you have any faith in any of the athletes or swimmers? I'll watch the boxing and maybe some of the distance events but anything below 1500m is highly suspect.

re Jones coming clean the Yanks love those who step up and confess all. Wait for the book and the inevitable round of high profile talk show appearaces.

If you want true Olympic Spirit the Special Olympics currently going on in China beats the regular version hands down. My mother was an interpreter for one of the Central American countries when it was in Ireland in 2003. It was a hugely enjoyable experience for her and for everyone connected with it athletes and supporters. The sun shone in Ireland almost the entire time which is something of a record.

[Winrew]

Britain's 400m world champion Christine Ohuruogu has had a lifetime ban from the Olympic Games overturned on appeal.

Ohuruogu was banned from racing for a year for missing three drugs tests before returning to win world gold.
Under British Olympic Association laws, athletes banned for drug offences are ineligible for all future Games. But the BOA said in a statement: "The panel decided that Christine Ohuruogu's appeal had been successful due to significant mitigating circumstances."

The BBC

Bloody joke if you ask me !!!
Three tests she missed and they forgive her......

[all_funkt_up]

Its a shame Jones didnt forget about her drugs test. Then she'd still be competing.

[Peter Orchard]

Steve Cram in the Guardian argues the case for Christine Ohuruogu to be re-instated but he does it as a member of the sports establishment in UK and already my hackles are raised.

Had Ohuruogu been a no hoper who we might have had to send in lieu of anyone else then there´s no doubt for me where this would have ended.

The sports establishment in UK has been a joke for some time.

The FA higher eschelons sit welded to their seats and deny any complicity in the Steve McClaren appointment. (they have the audacity even to suggest they´ll find his replacement)

The Olympic committee suggests that a 500 million quid stadium might be the thing when all but the guilty know that 500 will quickly metamorphose into a billion with a nod and a handshake.

The Wembley Stadium, sold by the FA to the NFL on a one-off basis directly before England´s match against Croatia suggests people who are more interested in quick profit than long term achievement.

This girl will now run in China next year why shouldn´t we forgive and forget?
We forgive most things in time.

[all_funkt_up]

Originally Posted by Peter Orchard

The Wembley Stadium, sold by the FA to the NFL on a one-off basis directly before England´s match against Croatia suggests people who are more interested in quick profit than long term achievement.

Have you seen what they're doing now?

They have that "race of champions" there next week.

They have tarmacced the pitch at wembley stadium.

Hardly going to help the surface is it?

[Peter Orchard]

That they tarmac the surface is neither here nor there since the national side is pretty much unemployed.
On the plus side, they´ll rip up the tarmac when these people are done and put some decent grass down.
That´s not to say England know how to play football on decent grass,. or indeed, on tarmac.

[Winrew]

or at all

[Peter Orchard]

indeed

[all_funkt_up]

Indeed, but the best surfaces are cultivated for years. They arent just layed down, only to be torn up a few weeks later to let a load of cars or NFL players maraud all over them.

It shows a lack of understanding really towards how to run a football ground.

[Peter Orchard]

well, AFU, if you take a trip up (or down) to the research centre at Bingley where they know more about grass than you could shake a bent stick at, they´ll tell you that two teams will do battle on any one of their lovely turfs but the winner will be the one who knows how to kick a football.

[Peter Orchard]

to be a tad more serious, the times are gone when grass fields had to be bedded in.
Football pitches are fairly fluid these days.

Again, ask the blokes at Bingley.