Disgraced sprinter Marion Jones has handed over the medals she won at the 2000 olympic games in Sydney, the US Anti- Doping Agency has said.
Jones has also accepted a two-year ban, althoug she announced her retirement last week when she admitted taking steriods to a New York Court. Jones confessed tha she had taken tetrahydrogestrinone from September 2000 through to July 2001. The 31-year-old won three golds and two metres, the 200 metres and the 4x400m relay, with bronzes in the jump and the 4x4100m relay.
Jones has said the THG she took, also known as ” the clear” because it did not show up in doping tests, came from the San Francisco BALCO Laboratory that was at the centre of US sports biggest doping scandal.
The US olympic Committee has asked the Athletics who competed with Jones in the relay to return their medals because USOC chief executive Jim Schirr said, they were won unfairly.
But he added that only athletics’ governing body the IAAF and the International Olympic Committee could order the return of the medals ” the outcome of this story is s valuable reminder that true athletic accomplishment is not obtained through cheating and any medal acquired through doping is only fool’s gold” said USADA chief executive officer travis T Tygart.
The IOC will also have to decide whether the athletes who finished behind Jones should be awarded Jones’ medals. Greece’s Katerine Thanou, who finished second to Jones in the 100m, later served a two year suspension aftermissing three tests. Jamaican Tayna lawrence won bronze.
Jones pleaded guity to two felonies in the New York Court case- lying to federal Investigators about a separate fraud case. She faces up to six months in jail under a plea bargain and will be sentenced in January. last week, IAAF persident Lamine Diack said Jones will be remembered as a ”fraud”
” if she had trusted her own natural gifts and allied them to self-sacrifices and hard work, i sincerely believe that she would have been an honest champion at the sydney Games” he said”.