Marion Jones

Marion Jones (born October 12, 1975 in Los Angeles, California) is an American athlete of half Belizean and half African American descent. She is the winner of five medals at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia. She holds dual citizenship from the USA and Belize (her mother's home country). Jones is a 1997 graduate of the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Jones recently admitted to having taken steroids before the Sydney 2000 Summer Olympics. This may result in the loss of her 3 gold and 2 bronze 2000 Olympic medals. It was announced that she intended to plead guilty to lying to federal investigators during the BALCO steroid investigation.

Personal life
In 1998, Marion Jones married shot putter C.J. Hunter, a coach on the University of North Carolina track team. Hunter was required to resign his position at UNC because of school rules that prohibited coach-athlete dating. He was banned from the 2000 Olympics after having tested positive for nandrolone. They divorced in 2002.

On 28 June 2003, Marion Jones gave birth to a son Tim Montgomery Jr. with then boyfriend Tim Montgomery. Montgomery had broken the 100 m World Record in 2002. Because of her pregnancy, Jones missed the 2003 World Championships, but spent a year preparing for the 2004 Olympics. Montgomery was banned from the sport (and his record rescinded) after admitting to the use of performance enhancing drugs.

On 24 February 2007, she married Barbadian sprinter Obadele Thompson in a small quiet ceremony in the rural North Carolina town of Wilson's Mills. Thompson won the 100m bronze medal at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia. The couple is currently expecting their first child.

Sports career
In high school, Jones won the California state championship in the 100 meters four years in a row, representing Rio Mesa and Thousand Oaks high schools. She was successfully defended by lawyer to the stars Johnny Cochrane on charges of doping during her high school track career.

She was invited to participate in the 1992 Olympic trials, and, after her showing in the 200m finals, would have made the team as an alternate in the 4x100m relays, but she refused the invitation. After winning further statewide sprint titles, she accepted a full scholarship to the University of North Carolina in basketball, where she helped the team win the NCAA championship in her freshman year. Jones "Red shirted" her 96 Basketball season to concentrate on track. Jones lost her spot on the 1996 Olympic team because of an injury, she decided to concentrate on track and field.

She excelled at her first major international competition, winning the 100 meter at the 1997 World Championships in Athens, while finishing 10th in the long jump. At the 1999 World Championships, Jones attempted to win four titles, but injured herself in the 200m after a gold in the 100 m and a long jump bronze.

Then in Sydney, Jones told the press that she was aiming for five gold medals. As it was considered a possibility by fans and pundits alike, she was a media darling during the Olympics. However, she finished with three golds and two bronzes, still an astonishing feat which had never been achieved by a female athlete before.

In years to come, her victories were tainted by rumors that Jones was using performance-enhancing drugs at the time. Her ex-husband C.J. Hunter, an Olympic shot-putter and confessed steroid user, testified under oath that he had seen her inject drugs into her stomach in the Olympic Village in Sydney, and her coach Trevor Graham was involved in a major drug scandal that broke in 2005, which implicated baseball player Barry Bonds, sprinters Tim Montgomery (Jones's former partner, and the father of her child), Chryste Gaines, Kelli White, and others, many of whom admitted to using illegal drugs while competing. Jones has continually denied ever using performance-enhancing drugs.

A dominant force in women's sprinting, Jones was upset in the 100 meter sprint at the 2001 World Championships, as Ukrainian Zhanna Pintusevich-Block beat her for her first loss in the event in six years. Jones, however, did claim the gold in both the 200m and 4 x 100m.

On her 2004 Olympics experience, Jones said "It's extremely disappointing, words can't put it into perspective." She came in fifth in the long jump and competed in the women's 4 x 100 m relay where they swept past the competition in the preliminaries only to miss a baton pass in the final race. Jones promised that her latest defeat would not be the end of her Olympic efforts.

As of May 2005, Jones has claimed that winning the gold medal at the 2008 Olympics remains her "ultimate goal."

May 2006 saw Jones run 11.06 at altitude but into a headwind in her season debut, and since then she has beaten Veronica Campbell and Lauryn Williams in subsequent 100m events.

On July 8, 2006, Jones won the 100 meter dash at Gaz de France with a 10.93. It was her fastest time in almost four years.

On July 11, 2006, Jones improved her time in the Rome Golden league with a 10.91, but was beaten to 2nd place by Jamaica's Sherone Simpson who clocked 10.87.

Allegations of using performance enhancing drugs
For years, Jones was coached by controversial speed coach Trevor Graham, whose Sprint Capitol running organization in North Carolina has been racked by drug suspensions and who himself is being investigated by a federal grand jury. For a time, Jones also worked out with renegade Canadian coach Charlie Francis, who admitted providing drugs to Ben Johnson, the Canadian sprinter who tested positive for steroids after setting a world record in the 100-meter race at the 1988 Games in Seoul.

On December 3, 2004, Victor Conte, the founder of BALCO, appeared in an interview with Martin Bashir on ABC's 20/20. In the interview, Conte told a national audience that he had personally given Jones five different illegal performance enhancing drugs before, during and after the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. In the course of investigative research, reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada reported Jones had received banned drugs from BALCO, citing documentary evidence and testimony from Jones's ex-husband disgraced Olympian C.J. Hunter, who claims to have seen her inject herself with the steroids.

According to Hunter, Jones' use of banned drugs began well before Sydney Initially, he told the investigators, Jones obtained EPO from Graham, who he said had a Mexican connection for the drug. Later, Hunter said, Graham met Conte, who began providing the coach with BALCO drugs that he distributed to Jones and other Sprint Capitol athletes. Still later, Hunter told federal investigators, Jones began receiving drugs directly from Conte.

Allegedly, Jones stopped receiving services from BALCO when her trainer became upset with Conte. Jones has never failed a drug test using the then-existing testing procedures - and insufficient evidence was found to bring charges regarding other untested performance enhancing drugs.

2006 EPO tests
At the USA Track and Field Championships in Indianapolis on June 23, 2006, an "A" sample of Marion Jones' urine tested positive for Erythropoietin (EPO), a banned performance-enhancer. This was reported by The Washington Post, citing people with knowledge of the results who were not identified. Jones withdrew from the Weltklasse Golden League meet in Switzerland, citing "personal reasons." Jones denied using performance-enhancing drugs. She retained lawyer Howard Jacobs, who has represented many athletes in doping cases, including Tim Montgomery and cyclist Floyd Landis. On September 6, 2006, Jones' lawyers announced that her "B" sample had tested negative, which cleared her from the doping allegations.

October 5 2007: Reported guilty plea to steroid use
The Washington Post reported that Jones will plead guilty on October 5, 2007 to lying to federal agents about her use of steroids prior to the 2000 Olympic games, admitting to using the steroid Tetrahydrogestrinone, known as "The Clear", from 1999. She claims she was kept under the impression she was taking a flaxseed oil supplement for two years while coach Trevor Graham supplied her with the substance. In a published letter, Jones said she'd used steroids until she stopped training with Graham at the end of 2002. She said she lied when federal agents questioned her in 2003 because she panicked when they presented her with a sample of "The Clear". Her admission might cost her the three gold and two bronze medals she earned during the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

Financial Troubles
Seven years after winning a women's record five Olympic track and field medals and snagging multimillion-dollar endorsement deals, Marion Jones is broke. . According to the Associated Press, Jones is heavily in debt, fighting off court judgments and is down to a bank balance of about US$2,000, according to recent court records reviewed by the Los Angeles Times. Last year a bank foreclosed on her $2.5-million mansion in an area of Chapel Hill, N.C., where Michael Jordan was a neighbor. She was also forced to sell two other properties, including her mother's house, to raise money. In her prime, Jones was one of track's first female millionaires, typically earning between $70,000 and $80,000 a race, plus at least another $1 million from race bonuses and endorsement deals. 

Involvement in alleged check-counterfeiting scheme
In July 2006, Marion Jones was linked to an alleged check-counterfeiting scheme that led to criminal charges against her coach and ex-boyfriend Montgomery. Documents showed that a $25,000 check made out to Jones was deposited in her bank account as part of the alleged multimillion-dollar scheme. Prosecutors allege that funds were sent to Jones' track coach, Steven Riddick, in Virginia, then funneled back to New York through a network of "friends, relatives and associates." Riddick was arrested in February on money-laundering charges. According to the indictment and subsequent documents filed with the court, the link to Jones was made through one of Riddick's business partners, Nathaniel Alexander.