Dorks And Losers

After repeated denials of steroid use, Mar­ion Jones has finally admit­ted that she did in fact use steroids dur­ing her career. In a let­ter to friends and fam­ily, Jones dis­closed her steroid use before the 2000 Sum­mer Olympics in Syd­ney. She won five medals, includ­ing three golds.

Fri­day, she pleaded guilty on two charges of lying to inves­ti­ga­tors — one on dop­ing and the other on a check fraud scheme. She also announced her retire­ment. Fac­ing up to six months in prison, terms of her plea bar­gain say she will be sen­tenced to only three. She might have com­pany. Her for­mer coach Trevor Gra­ham — the per­son who sup­plied her with the juice — is to be tried for lying to fed­eral agents in the U.S. government’s BALCO steroid investigation.

It was sim­ply a mat­ter for time before Jones would reach this point. BALCO founder Vic­tor Conte accused Jones of dop­ing — even declar­ing that he saw her use it. Her for­mer boyfriend Tim Mont­gomery had already admit­ted to using steroids to the United States Anti-Doping Agency and was banned from com­pe­ti­tion for two years. Mont­gomery retired from com­pe­ti­tion and was stripped of all medals and results retroac­tive to March 31, 2001.

Graham’s other clients Michelle Collins and Justin Gatlin had already received bans from com­pe­ti­tion. With so many peo­ple around her being sum­mar­ily taken down by the gov­ern­ment, it was tough to see Jones fight so hard to main­tain her innocence.

Jones had already lost all cred­i­bil­ity by test­ing pos­i­tive for EPO (ery­thro­poi­etin) in 2006. Her backup sam­ple tested neg­a­tive which sup­pos­edly exon­er­ated her, but that’s another issue related to the reli­a­bil­ity of test­ing meth­ods (as Floyd Lan­dis repeat­edly argues). But even if she didn’t admit to steroid use, merely by being asso­ci­ated with so many sus­pected and proven steroid sup­pli­ers and users, she had already lost the fight.

The IOC (Inter­nal Olympic Com­mit­tee) is set to strip Jones of her Olympic medals. The IAAF (Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ics Foun­da­tion) is also ready to strip titles and medals from other inter­na­tional com­pe­ti­tions. Any­one who thinks she shouldn’t be stripped can just look to the recent strip­ping of Floyd Lan­dis’ Tour de France gold medal by the ICU (Inter­na­tional Cycling Union).

On a side note, who voted in favor of Lan­dis in that 2–1 panel decision?

Jones should be treated no dif­fer­ently. Why she waited so long to tell the truth is beyond me. Her rea­sons seem hon­est enough. She pan­icked and backed her­self into a cor­ner. Any­one can sym­pa­thize, but then again any­one isn’t a for­mer Olympic cham­pion who was a hero to many young girls want­ing to be like her. She could redeem her­self by being the one athlete-spokesperson against steroid use, unlike the many oth­ers who repeat­edly deny all accu­sa­tions. Unless these ath­letes are really inno­cent, I don’t see how they can look any­one in the eye and not tell the truth.

The base­ball world refers to the 90s as the steroids era. But that term shouldn’t just refer to base­ball, since the prob­lem appears more wide­spread than most peo­ple real­ize. But the fed­eral inves­ti­ga­tions will con­tinue to look like a witch hunt until more A-list ath­letes are found guilty, or at least named. The Scott Schoe­neweises of the world can rest assured that the gov­ern­ment isn’t really after them, but more inter­ested in the Barry Bond­ses. A clean sports world is a good thing, but it might be impos­si­ble for sports to ever seem pure again because our soci­ety has pro­duced a numbers-infatuated (sta­tis­tics, money) cul­ture that will con­stantly look toward that edge for guidance.

But the real moral of the story is to tell the truth. No, wait, actu­ally it is to beware the feds. With no reli­able test­ing for HGH (human growth hor­mone) and other designer steroids, unless some­one “cred­i­ble” tes­ti­fies to see­ing you using it, no one can prove you did oth­er­wise. Well, not unless you’re dumb enough to use a steroid that can be tested (a la Rafael Palmeiro) or be caught hav­ing a ship­ment sent to your house (Jason Grim­s­ley). If you’re smarter than them, you’re pretty much in the clear.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 2% [?]