Since my last post, Jones has returned her medals-something I didn't believe she would ever do. At the same time, although Jones announced her retirement, the US Track and field only suspended her for two years. This is stunning particularly because she admitted using for years. Again another example of our light standards for athlets who have big names by cheating. In my view the head lines should read rightful athletes finally received some justice and received their medals. I would now like Jones competitive times erased from all track and field historical records and all athletes who should have gotten medals and higher places, be upgraded in historical records and there medals given to the competitors. Track and field has never been fair to help the victimized athletes.
Honor, integrity and correcting wrongs to make a right is what is missing in the DNA of track and field and is a primary reason why our greatest athletes in these modern times are not getting chances to be seen by the world because cheaters have taken over and nobody cares. Our greatest athelets are leaving in droves because they refuse to cheat.
Do The Right Thing Marion, Return The Medals
The buzz in the crowd at the stadium at Cerritos College near Los Angeles on that warm Saturday evening in June 1993 was electric. The more than 10,000 high school track buffs that packed the stands for the California state High School track and field championship were there almost to a person for one reason. They came to be thrilled by and to cheer the young high school phenom, Marion Jones. Her talent was prodigious and her reputation had gone far beyond high school track circles. On the track, she looked even then like a woman among girls. Her two sprint races were for the most part an exercise in going through the motions. Her victories were a foregone conclusion. The only question was would she set yet another record.
She didn't disappoint. Jones was magnificent that evening in her near record breaking double sprint wins. It was the fourth time that she accomplished the unprecedented fete, and the second time that I personally saw her do the double. After each win that evening, she flashed her trademark toothy smile to the wildly cheering crowd, and graciously took a short victory jog. Everyone, this writer included, just knew that we were not only witnessing history, but felt that we were in the presence of someone truly special. Jones added to that feeling by pulling a fete that no other track athlete had done. She copped the Gatorade Athlete of the Year Award for a second time. Being a track nut, I continued to closely follow, admire and cheer Jones on through her college and Olympic triumphs.
The lofty perch that she rested on that evening after her victories at the state championship meet never seemed more secure. With her special blend of seemingly awesome natural talent, grace, and personal charm, she seemed destined to stay on top for years to come. But even then there was a wisp of a cloud. After a high school championship meet in 1992, she failed to show up for a mandatory drug test. That prompted a flurry of faint whispers that maybe there was more to Jones's track reign than met the eye. But Jones moved fast, and hired famed attorney Johnnie Cochran to clear things up. Her failure to show was chalked up to a misunderstanding and quickly forgotten. As Jones continued to firm up her spot as America's reigning track queen, the allegations and finger pointing gnawed deeper at her throne. But Jones always seemed to have the last word for the doubters and finger pointers. The word was always "it taint true." If you still had doubts, there was her denial in big, bold print on page 173 of her 2004 autobiography, Marion Jones, Life in the Fast Lane, (The title told more than Jones intended). "I am against performance enhancing drugs. I have never taken them and I never will take them."
The words, of course, were a bald faced lie. Her brutal plunge from public grace and adulation is a cautionary tale. In fact, it's two cautionary tales. It a short misstep from public acclaim to public disgrace for superstar icons, and there's no surer way to make that happen than to lie and cheat to win at all costs. And when the inevitable exposure happens, the public is merciless and pitiless in its wrath and contempt. Jones earned and deserved both.
Even her apology as sincere and heartfelt as it seemed, came only after she was legally pressed to the wall by the feds. The apology is even more galling because it was dumped on top of the years of her duck, dodge, and cover your backside denials, punctuated by lawsuits, and the threat of lawsuits against anyone who dared suggest that she was a cheater. It is even more galling because thousands of fans and admirers, myself included, fervently wanted to believe in her innocence and in blind faith charged her accusers with vicious rumor mongering and character assassination to defame and destroy the reputation of a young African-American woman who stood as an intelligent, poised and successful role model to many African-Americans and young women.
But Jones played us all, and that makes the hurt that she's a self-admitted cheat and liar even more painful. Her track career is finished. She, of course, will plunge even deeper into financial ruin. She will likely serve a stretch in a federal pen. Now all that's left is for the International Olympic Committee to drop the axe on her and strip her of the five Olympic medals that she won at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games.
Jones should not wait for that to happen. She should voluntarily return her Olympic medals. It won't make her any less the cheater that she was, but her voluntary return of the medals will add real meaning to her public apology, help restore her name and integrity, and send a strong message that cheating and unfair play to win is not the Olympic and American way.
Marion, you owe yourself and your fans that much.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book The Latino Challenge to Black America: Towards a Conversation between African-Americans and Hispanics (Middle Passage Press, October 2007).
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I am glad you said this Earl. I for one, was shocked that of the laundry list of people to whom she pleaded for forgiveness, none was the other Olympic Athletes who she robbed of a fair competition. She begged forgiveness from her fans, her young fans, each of her individual family members, her "classy" mother. But did she ask forgiveness from the competitors from other countries who were duped out of a fair shake after training for years to make it to the games? No. To me, her apologies were phony. She is more saddened by he fact that she got caught. The ONLY thing to do is to voluntarily return the medals. But even now, that the public has had to suggest this to her, proves that she still doesn;t "get it". What a loser! She embodies all that is wrong with American society today. Overprivileged and still unsatisfied. Gotta steal things even tho we already have much more than most to begin with. I am more ashamed every day by my government and my sports figures. Barry Bonds is a douche too!
Nonsense. Steroid use is far beyond Marion Jones. Don't think for a minute that she was the only one on the track who was using. Further, steroids don't give you talent you don't already have.
Athletes have to compete if far more competitions today than ever. There are far more athletes against which to compete. There is far more travel than before, more scrutiny, all that kind of stuff.
I agree. Marion should return the medals on her own accord. Why hold onto them and wait for the Olympic committe to put their foot on her neck?
Returning the medals is the right thing to do.
What about Carl Lewis and Michael Johnson? When are they going to confess?
"cheating and unfair play to win is not the ... American way"?
Seen from a vantage point (Europe), I'd say cheating and unfair play is becoming more and more the American Way (as can be clearly seen in your 2 latest presidental elections). This is no wonder, as it is so closely connected to the American Dream, which can more and more be described by "winning at ALL COST".
Many athletes today will rather be remembered as a cheater than not be remembered at all.
As long as Big Brother "celebrities" are idolized for nothing more than having fornicated on prime time, young people will do anything to achieve similar fame.
she still be label even if she did the right thing.
I still pondering why Huff dosen't have a sport section...must be prowrestling fan if you welling to combine sports and enterainment.
I suggested a technology section not long ago.
But if there were a sports section and technology section, it might change the gender-demographics of the readers and participants.
Why do we invest so much of ourselves in the performance of young athletes and celebrities?
And why, after we dangle accolades and millions of dollars in the faces of children, are we shocked to discover they are willing to do anything to get those rewards?
Of course Jones and the long list of "cheaters" who have come before her are responsible for their own actions, but don't we all hold some responsibility for creating the culture that encourages this? Eventually there is going to be some record that no one can physically break without doping. Isn't it just a bit disingenuous to cheer for something which we should know is ultimately impossible?
Marion Jones was caught cheating using drugs as early as 14 years old. She has been cheating to win her entire career and cannot win at any level without using drugs.
On the other hand, US Track and Field has always been ignoring these type of athletes and never taken a pro-active approach to catching cheaters for fear cheating has come so pervasive, all the heros caught would hurt revenue and cause thoses with cushy jobs in Track and Field to risk losing their jobs.
For those not famaliar with Track & Field, the fact is, in the same year Ben Johnson was caught using Steriods, many US track & field athletes were also caught. They were let go and results were swept under the rugs because US track and field thought is would destroy their sport and the Olympic image. Ben Johnson was caught and made public before other athletes results were determined.
Jones has not only gained fame by cheating, but was stupid enough to hire lawyers to try to defend her and literally give the money she earned to attorneys. Her husband was a convicted cheater and her coach did the same thing. This is no secret. In the last years of US miler Steve Scotts career, he was also using steriods.
The sad story is there are other athletes who like Marion Jones and as decorated who were caught cheating and let go by the Olympic committee. The great Lassie Viren from Finland, like Jones, denied blood doping thoughout his career, but later admitted to it when all the evidence was made public. You can check that on the internet. Nothing was ever asked of him and he is still regarded as a hero and his Olympic records still stand. Rightfully winners have still be denied their medals. I can go on and on.
Men are as easy to spot as females because the changes they make to the body are identical. Protruding jaw, greater than usual bulk. If a femal sprinter looks like a man, she's probably using
Cheaters have ruined Track & Field
Earl, I feel your pain buddy, I have followed Ms Jones career like you since she was in high school dominating the track scene in Calif. When she attended NC state I watched in awe as she lead the womens basketball team to a National Championship, taking the ball and speeding up the court to the hoop leaving all in the dust.
Her Olympic career was legendary and Marion always came off as a beautiful, well spoken, dignified, and self deprecating athelte and African AMerican woman who undoubtedly had a tremendous future in store for her no matter what she chose to pursue.
When I visited the country of Belize I saw the pride the people had for JOnes (her family originated there) and the athletic facilities Marion Jones had financed were a shining example of her class act.
Alas it was all built on a foundation of sand that eroded so fast before our collective eyes as the media and our own dysfunctional society's condemnation of selective athletes use of performance enhancing drugs ground her to dust.
Why can't there be a foolproof test of all atheletes for any and all drugs? Or maybe there should be an "anything goes" attitude where the playing field is equal and drugs were available to all.
I don't know, but with our society's dependence on pharmaceuticals for everything and our "win at all cost's" philosophy it almost seems hypocrital to single out athletes as being culpable for all our sins.
Let's use a bit of the substance I'M addicted to: logic.
Logic says that as various and sundry humans pursue ever-more illusive performance improvements, the frequency of record-setting occurrences will follow a descending asymptotic line. That is, such occurrences will happen less and less frequently, until effectively, they don't happen at all.
Also as time goes by, the records that ARE set, will be set more and more by humans less and less representative of the human norm: Lance Armstrongs.
Take those considerations together, and it means that non-freak physiologies will have to compete in "special" classes, and will hold no hope of truly setting any records at all.
This is starting to happen now, and as the performance wall grows harder to break through, athletes' desperation for an edge grows. It's an arms race between performance and monitoring that in the end will only lead to athletes that are no longer human at all.
My own take on the issue is simple: who cares? Let the freaks dope and tinker with their genes all they want. I won't be watching anyway. There is so much more to being human than running a three-minute mile, and I get no closer to my own humanity by cheering on such efforts, even if they DID do it without pharm.
Well you won't be the first or last fan to have invested some something in an athlete that you had to give back somewhere down the road. But don't dump on them entirely without first taking a look at what has happened to sport today.
First, cheating is endemic in all of life, it would seem. So look at what we invest in winners as opposed to those who come in second, third, or fourth place. What have we invested in the shortest professional career world that would influence a professional athlete to seek every edge possible?
You are coming off real petulant here, Earl. Are you pounding a stake into your backyard?
There are enough of them out there to bring about tons of this disappointment.
Furthermore, she has grown up now a bit, you must remember that she was a kid and these athletes are kids when we project all of our life's desires upon them. And what about the enablers and traducers that surround athletes?
Vampires at every corner.
A bunch of people in the current administration have lied to us, to federal officials and we are getting bent out of shape over athletes lying? Unreal.
Best you remember the good times, Earl. Good times you got from this kid who became a channel for all kinds of human desires and likely a channel for not so wholesome energies.
We need to do more to protect the children.
Period.
"Pounding a stake into [his] backyard"? How are we supposed to take that? It sure feels uncomfortable to me.
But with the "protect the children" line, surely you're echoing the "Simpsons" parody line, right?
Otherwise, all in all, this is one of the most bizarre posts I've read on this bizarre site.
either you just came around here or you have only recently learned to read. The sentence was Earl, are you pounding a stake in your backyard? So it was directed to Earl, not Thorn.
Let me help you out a bit more. A stake is is that large wooden pole that was pounded into the ground for the convenient burning of witches and other such unsavory characters that have been known to annoy the rest of humanity. Some sort of kindling was placed around the feet and fire was applied which eventually consumed the victim. Of course the word "petulant" in the previous sentence would have served as a clue to the diligent reader.
Somehow fans of sport seem to think that athletes owe them some kind of what, integrity that they may be lacking in their own existence and seem to take it personally when things are discovered that suggested the athlete was not so full on integrity. Then folk want to come down on the athlete as if they are so above it all.
It is unfortunate, the proliferation of steroid use but let us not act as if we are somehow innocent and that the Marion Jones of the world are different from the rest of us outside of certain abilities.
Be more careful about your hero choices and and
you won't be so let down when the human emerges.
I'm really fascinated by the psychology of
cheaters. How can people like Jones and fallen Tour de France cyclist Floyd Landis stand not knowing if they would have been the best without the drugs? And why wouldn't they want to know? What really must have mattered to these people was the fame, glory and riches, and not attaining the unadulterated top-level of achievement in their sport. How could they just ignore what would have to be a gigantic mental asterisk denoting "cheater" in their consciousness for the rest of their lives? What's got to really gnaw at these people after the dust has cleared and they're
sitting on their front porches years from now reminiscing about the past, is that they could very well have been as dominant and outstanding
without breaking the rules. They'll never know.
I think it is a gradual process, and by the time they have found themselves at the point where they are shooting steroids, they've already gone too far down the road to stop. A little boost here, some blood doping there...
This case really saddens me because I truly admired her when she won. I didn't know anything about the rumors prior to all this, and she was so earnest and put so much into it, you had to love her. I guess this case connects with me much more than the Landis case because I am a runner, not a bike, but it really upsets me to see it happen.
Well said libdude.
Cheaters are in part encouraged by society's relaxed standards on cheating and responsibility. I don't like shifting part of the responsibility on society but here is my case.
Student cheating more pervasive than ever and sadder when teachers and school administrators also cheat. Some teachers who caught students teaching faced retribution instead of support from parents. Web sites sell school papers and tests. Kids break into school offices or hack school computers for tests.
CEO's are rewarded millions of dollars whether they succeed or not. Case in point, Home Depot's previous CEO. He is one of many who fleeced not only lower paid staff in corporations but many customers.
Government officials screw up royally and are left unpunished. George Tenet was rewarded with the Medal of Freedom. Donald Rumsfeld was left untouched. Alberto Gonzales was allowed to go home without further accountability. Karl Rove the same. Was anyone in Washington held accountable for Abu Graib? No. The blame was shifted onto the lower ranks who followed orders. Generals who expressed the realities of a war in Iraq before the war started were hushed and reassigned.
I am not defending cheating athletes. They should rise above the scum of the earth and be guided by ethics and sportsmanship not greed. But in a society more permissive of cheaters that rewards those who can get away with it, it's increasingly harder for athletes to remain virtuous.
I am not suggesting cheating athletes should be let off the hook. On the contrary, they must be held accountable and performance enhancement drug detection must be escalated in scope and accuracy.
Taking it further, a sense of responsibility and accountability must be restored in all aspects of life.
Agreed. At least Jones finally admitted to the
cheating and apologized, albeit only after she
could no longer keep up the charade. So even
the apology seems a bit staged and empty. Still, she's ahead of crooked lawmakers and
business heads who just utterly refuse to accept responsibility for their incompetence and lawbreaking no matter how nefarious. Even
so, I was struck by how quickly Jones asked for forgiveness from the people whom she has lied to and used for so many years. Her family
and friends just have to be crushed. Maybe I'm being too harsh, but it seems to me that begging for forgiveness like that, before most
people who are still interested can even sort it out, is just another self-serving act; little more than an emotional reflex put into words--"Please do this for ME," she's saying. Pretty ballsy, considering the circumstances.
And sad, too. I don't wish her ill, though.
Nobody's perfect.
I agree that she should return the medals on her own initiative. It's a reasonable act of contrition.
Her recent apology seemed sincere but for a while I thought her tears were crocodile tears till near the end of her speech.
I am waiting to hear from the Olympic Committee. They have been silent enough on this.
While not defending cheating, on any level. I do want to say that at the top of the professional sports world, where years of unbelievable pain, anxiety and effort are condensed into a brief period of performance, and a second is literally the difference between a lifetime of moving dirt and the opportunity to fulfill all the dreams of glory and accomplishment that fueled those hours of intense training. The line between cheating and going the extra mile becomes harder to see, less distinct. In a society dedicated to the proposition that our medical science can and should be used to improve, not just repair, ourselves. How could we expect that ethic not to also exist in our sports?
Drug use and performance sports have become synonymous.
Gooooo CHESS CLUB!
Chess has been declared a hazardous sport!
When "deep thinking" about the gambit, players frequently fall asleep over the board and poke their eye out on a king.. (nerdy chess joke).
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Posted October 6, 2007 | 09:34 PM (EST)