Marion Jones, the track and field star from Thousand Oaks who won five medals and worldwide fame at the 2000 Olympic Games in Australia, is expected today to become the most significant athlete to admit to using performance enhancing drugs, after years of fiercely denying it.
Such an admission could lead to Jones’ being stripped of those medals.
As it should.
The apparent plea bargain comes after years of accusations that Jones had boosted her performances with drugs, including an eyewitness account from Victor Conte, founder of Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, that she used a steroid known as “the clear” and knew what it was…Conte later pleaded guilty to steroid distribution. Swept up in that scandal were a number of athletes, baseball star Barry Bonds and Jones among them.
The years of lies, half-truths, rationales disappear when truth finally takes center stage. Interviews and lecture circuit denials are as worthless as her victories.
Take them all away, she doesn’t deserve to keep medal that were won by her cheating!
I always cringed when Jones made those unequivocal denials.
She so clearly looked like she was on steroids. How many women look like that with workouts alone
It’s sports… so lets make a big deal out of it.
All of these “superstar” athletes are super freaks. Maybe they should just admit that professional (and Olympic) sports have become a slightly higher-class version of WWF Smackdown. A charade, with no other reason to exist than to make money.
Marion Jones got caught. Barry Bonds got caught (sort of, although he won’t admit it). A bunch of cyclists got caught. Does anybody actually believe that this isn’t just the tip of the iceberg?
Yeah, you don’t get legs like that from eating Wheaties. Especially for a woman, it is hard to build muscle without an anabolic steroid.
She deprived other world class athletes of their long journey to win in the Olympics with her drug riddled body.
Shame. Take her medals away and throw them into the fire at the Beijing Olympics in front of the world.
However, be prepared for Al Sharpton to lead a march in Washington to bask in the next black discrimination show.
What to do when it’s nearly impossible to determine who took what?
They will always take it – the richest to the poorest.
Don’t make it illegal. Allow the athletes to take whatever, whenever.
Will even out the playing field.
Will make for better and entertaining viewing. 🙂
Simply place a limit on parts-per-million-per-pee one month before the competition and just before the competition.
I’d love to see the quarter mile run by a human beating a sports car.
Javelins thrown outside of the stadium.
The Discus embedded into masonry clear across the opposite side.
Quintuple somersaults on the low diving board.
She’s broke now, too.
Just deserts!
There’s a missing link here. Sure let’s blame the athletes but the drugs just don’t grow on trees. There are doctors out there prescribing them and there is a current case going on with a doctor who has prescribed steroids for dozens of wrestlers and athletes. Get rid of the source of the problem.
9. There are doctors out there prescribing them and there is a current case going on with a doctor who has prescribed steroids for dozens of wrestlers and athletes. Get rid of the source of the problem.
The doctor’s and dealers have their part of the blame, but at the end of the day its the athlete that makes the choice. They are grown ups, at least as much as anyone is a grown up these days, they make their own choices and they suffer the consequences. You can find all sorts of causes, but that doesn’t remove culpability.
Sure, let’s take away Jones’ medals and records. But who’s to say the next person in line wasn’t using unapproved substances either? I believe cheating is quite rampant in sports and who can blame someone for using steroids to level the playing field when you know the next greatest competitor is probably doing the same.
I agree with Mark (above). Just allow any and all substances. It will level the playing field and allow us to more fully understand these so-called “performance enhancing substances.” How do we know these even work? Bonds could have broken the record without even using Steroids possibly. Who’s to say Motrin isn’t a performance enhancing drug because it’s an advantage athletes didn’t have long ago. Who’s to say multivitamins aren’t performance enhancing. Creatine is legal, yet highly effective.
Marion Jones may have cheated, sure. But I can almost certainly guarantee you that her second place finisher in that race probably cheated too.
I’m sick and tired of all these “wholesome” sports image; it’s just like the dumb perception that the women competing in the Miss Universe beauty pageant are all natural and VIRGIN.
I would prefer to see the athletes consume steriods as if they were nothing but M&Ms because right now EVERYONE CAN GET THEM, so fuck you lame “We don’t allow steriods because they’re unfair for the competitors” excuse.
God must have given her the drugs.
On the bright side, she now has 3 testicles.
Since it’s nothing but an arms race between detectors and drug designers, like it or not, sports will eventually become a free for all. “Naturals” won’t be able to compete. The war is already lost on this one.
This is an underlying theme in “Achilles Choice”: http://tinyurl.com/2rt4t6 which I recall was a pretty good story although I read it years ago.
Point taken #12, but is bionics next? DO you really want to open up that door as you suggest “anything goes”?
Sorry, I don’t think I’m quite ready for that slippery slope Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I rather keep one of the few things left in our “advanced society” that is reasonably and can be kept reasonably “whole”..
#11 – tau.reanb
“…who can blame someone for using steroids to level the playing field when you know the next greatest competitor is probably doing the same.”
Who can blame them? Easy. Any one of the dwindling number of people who know that honor, integrity, honesty all come before winning.
This is one of the reasons I don’t watch or care about pro sports anymore. I stick to amateur, little league etc, that haven’t been completely corrupted by $$$
Who cares which drug fuelled freak ‘athelete’ wins over another.
These are our heroes?
#16, Lauren,
I think that “honor, integrity, and honesty” is something spoken by those who sit on the sidelines. When one gets to this level of competition, winning becomes all important. If cheating is required to surpass, then so be it.
I don’t approve of using artificial means to excel, but then I never played sports at that level.
Someone above mentioned Al Sharpton. This is starting to sound like some racial shit.
Jeebus H. Cripes there are a lot of sports haters on here. Next thing you know, you guys will try to outlaw football. That’s when I get pissed.
Yeah, they should give footballs steroids so they’ll go further when you kick them.
There’s a name for athletes that don’t take steroids… losers.
Of course they suspended over 200 athletes during the Olympics in which she won her medals in for steroids, because they were from 3rd world countries that couldn’t afford the good ones.
Hey folks, go easy on her; she’s a black role model.
I am not condoning what Marion Jones did but I feel that even without the enhancement, she would still have come in first place in her sport, provided that the other athletes were not taking in enhancements. The steroids just speeds up the time that a runner would come in be it first place, second place etc. Let her keep her medals she would have come in first place anyway.