After her tearful and self-flagellating speech on the day she copped a plea to perjuring herself, I thought Marion Jones, former world class sprinter, would come out of prison and begin where she left off. Apparently even six months in a Texas jail cell hasn't diminished her hubris.
Jones, who appeared in her first televised interview on the Oprah Winfrey show told Winfrey's audience that she likes to think she could have won all those medals in the 2000 Olympics despite having a desginer steroid, nicknamed "The Clear", in her system. She continues to maintain her pre-incarceration position that she thought the steroid was merely flaxseed oil, as she says she was told by her coach, Trevor Graham. Graham has just begun his twelve-month home confinement sentence for his own crimes of perjury in connection with the BALCO Labs steroid investigation
While she says she told her kids she was guilty of perjury because she was too weak to stand up and tell the truth, she hedged in her apology to her Olympic relay race teammates who lost their gold medals because of her crime. She is sorry she lied and got them booted out of the record books but she will not admit she knew what she was taking was a banned substance that gave her an edge over her competitors. Do any of us know if she is telling a lie when she says that? No, but her associations tell us much that we might want to know about the extent of her knowledge. Her ex-husband juiced up for his sporting events during the time surrounding the 2000 Olympics and together they denied Jones' involvement despite him having tested positive more than once. She chose a coach who was known in elite ahtletic circles as a guy who trained athletes (including her then husband and her future boyfriend) that pushed the envelope on the doping rules. Even her next romantic interest, Tim Montgomery was heavily involved in using human growth homone care of Graham and fell even farther than Marion by taking part in a money laundering operation and dealing heroin for which he is currently doing hard prison time. Jones was not charged with participating in the money laundering crimes although Montgomery was actively engaged in commiting them while he and Jones were a couple.
In saying she believes she could have triumphed in the 2000 Sydney games without the help of chemicals she ignores the lost races and her lack of medals in the 2004 Athens Olympics when she was already under suspicion about her suspected drug use and by her own admission was running clean. I will grant you that she was four years older than the young sprinter who piled up the medals in the 2000 Sydney games but it is highly speculative at best and egotistical at worst for her to say she could have won. I guess there's only so much truth our systems can take.
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