Jones admits to using steroids
A week ago, Marion Jones admitted she was a serial abuser of steroids. I was crestfallen.
After all, Jones always denied using steroids – often with anger and indignation. I am very cynical. But I bought her denials hook, line, and sinker. She looked graceful off and on the track. So how could she have been just another juiced-up freak?
Jones is only the latest professional athlete caught in a web of lies for using PEDs. But her fall from grace will leave fans of every sport questioning: If Marion wasn’t clean, who is? And who can blame them?
The public apology and its echoes
As public apologies go, hers was affecting:
I have let my country down. … I recognize that by saying that I’m deeply sorry, it might not be enough and sufficient to address the pain and the hurt that I have caused you.
Therefore, I want to ask your forgiveness for my actions and I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.
Jones was contrite without bawling her eyes out. By contrast, televangelist Jimmy Swaggart cried me a river when he confessed. He admitted to consorting with prostitutes.
And she was articulate without being too scripted. By contrast, shock-jock Don Imus bungled his plea for forgiveness. He called Black women on the Rutgers basketball team “nappy-headed hos” and got lassoed for it.
The restitution and stolen glory
Soon after confessing her sins, Jones offered to return her Olympic medals. She had no choice because the IOC demanded them. She had already announced her retirement. She had no choice because she couldn’t win without using steroids.
But there’s no returning the Olympic glory she stole from other athletes. Bahamian (“Golden Girl”) Pauline Davis-Thompson placed second behind Jones in the 200m at the 2000 Olympic Games. She maintains that:
[S]he would not like receiving the gold medal in this fashion, and she would have preferred to ‘lace up her sprints and gun for it.’
(The Nassau Guardian, October 11, 2007)
And who can blame Davis-Thompson? Indeed, even I can appreciate how tepid a consolation this must be. It pales compared to the thrill of victory she could have experienced at the Olympic Games.
Jones’ hypocrisy and fallout
Jones was infamously intolerant of those involved with steroids. She divorced world shot-put champion C.J. Hunter after he was suspended for using steroids. Later, she ended her relationship with former 100m world-record holder Tim Montgomery for the same reason.
The punishment and financial decline
The judge sentenced Jones to a few months in prison. That time might provide a welcome respite from her growing woes. And she was a multimillionaire just years ago. Yet the Los Angeles Times is reporting that:
- A bank foreclosed on her $2.5 million home.
- She had to sell all other properties (including a house she bought for her Mummy).
- She is heavily in debt and has only $2,000 in the bank.
Decriminalize steroids and other drugs
I reiterate my plea to decriminalize drugs, especially in sports. Doing so is the only way to stop turning great athletes into big cheaters. I have in mind athletes like Tour de France Champion Floyd Landis and 2004 Olympic 100m Champion Justin Gatlin.
And don’t get me started on the federal indictment of Baseball’s home-run king, Barry Bonds. That indictment hovers like a Damoclean over professional sports.
And it did not help his case when Jones revealed that her steroid of choice was “the clear.” After all, this is the same PED Bonds insisting on describing as his special brand of “flaxseed oil.”
Now all we need is for Lance Armstrong to fess up and for Carl Lewis to come out of the closet. They are two of the most famous athletes in the world. Yet suspicions linger about their steroids.
Kalyn Whetsell says
did she lose the medals she had won?