Belizean descent former American track and field athlete will have to face another scandal, after denying the use of performance enhancing drugs last October, Jones was formally stripped of her Olympic Medals on Dec 12th and banned from attending next year's Olympic Games. Now, according to the several pages of the ledger that was released to the media on Friday, Jones is guilty of using human growth hormones, oxygen boosting drug (EPO) as well as steroids like norbolethone and tetrahydrogestrinone.
Even when the athlete was already penalized by the sport authorities, the government recommended she must receive more than six months in prison for lying to an Internal Revenue Service agent about her doping practices and her role in an elaborate check fraud scheme.
At first, Jones only admitted to be taken the designer steroid called "the clear" in 2001. However, the ledger of the BALCO (Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative) case revealed the sport star was implicated in a long term effort to enhance her performance through the use of prohibit substances for her personal gain and was also linked to BALCO lab.
Marion Jones was definitely more involved than she admitted in court last October; therefore, the District Court of New York decided the athlete must be sentenced in January 11th.The most revealing information in the ledger was when Jones took the drugs. Apparently, it was a month before the Sydney Olympics and during them also. The way the drugs were administered was also published; it was through sublingual drops and subcutaneous injections.
Jones also used a wide variety of performance enhancing drugs besides "the clear", one of the substances distributed to athletes seven years ago by Balco Laboratories of Burlingame. The ledger, whose existence was long known, has the names of several other athletes, but the documents essentially suggest the extent of doping by BALCO clients.
The exposure not only heats Jones' reputation, it also hits the sports community and the Olympic Games popularity. Marion Jones was one of the most famous people in sports due to her five medals (three gold ones) won at the Sydney Games in 2000; these have already been given to someone else but that does not repair the damage done to the international sport image.
