How can an athlete
so beautiful turn out to be so ugly

Jones admits to using steroids

Last week, Marion Jones admitted to being a serial abuser of steroids. I was crestfallen. After all, Jones always denied using steroids – complete with moral indignation.

I’m a cynical man, but I bought her denials hook, line, and sinker. She was always so graceful on and off the track. How could she have been just another juiced-up freak?

But Jones is only the latest professional athlete caught in a web of lies for using PEDs. Yet her fall from grace will leave fans of every sport questioning:

If Marion wasn’t clean, who is?

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. Unlike televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, who cried me a river when he confessed to consorting with prostitutes.

Jones was also articulate without being too scripted. Unlike shock-jock Don Imus, who bungled his plea for forgiveness after calling Black women on the Rutgers basketball team “nappy-headed hos.”

The restitution and stolen glory

Jones offered to return her Olympic medals. But she had no choice because the IOC demanded their return. She also announced her retirement. But she had no choice because she couldn’t win without steroids.

The problem, however, is that 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 says 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)

Who can blame Davis-Thompson? Indeed, even I can appreciate how tepid a consolation this must be. It pales compared with the thrill of victory she could have experienced at the Olympic Games.

Hypocrisy and punishment

Jones was famously intolerant of steroid users. She divorced world shot-put champion C.J. Hunter after the USATF suspended him for steroid use. She ended her relationship with former 100m world record holder Tim Montgomery for the same reason.

The judge sentenced Jones to a few months in prison. But that time might provide a welcome respite from her growing woes.

Notably, she was a multimillionaire just years ago. Yet the Los Angeles Times reports 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. It’s the only way to stop turning great athletes into big cheaters. Look at 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.

It didn’t help his case when Jones revealed that her steroid of choice was “the clear.” After all, this is the same PED Bonds insists is just his special brand of “flaxseed oil.”

All we need now is for Lance Armstrong and Carl Lewis to fess up. They are two of the most famous athletes in the world. Yet suspicions linger about their use of steroids.