Tarnished Glory

She was everybody's, including NEWSWEEK's, cover girl before the 2000 Sydney Olympics—not just the biggest female star (and a beauty to boot) but the biggest story of those Games. Marion Jones's goal had been to one-up Jesse Owens and Carl Lewis, setting her sights on an unprecedented five track and field gold medals in Sydney. And with her unrivaled speed and athleticism, anything seemed possible. She fell short, but it was hard to consider one of the greatest performances in Olympic history—three gold medals and two bronzes—a disappointment.

Now, seven years later, comes the disappointment. According to the Washington Post Jones has written to friends admitting to using steroids in the two-year run-up to the 2000 Games. "I want to apologize for all this," she wrote, according to the Post, quoting from one letter. "I am sorry for disappointing you in so many ways." Jones, who through recent years has steadfastly denied using any performance-enhancing drugs, pled guilty in federal court today to lying to federal agents about her drug use as well as to a second charge related to financial wrongdoing by a former boyfriend, sprinter Tim Montgomery.

Jones had been one of the biggest names linked to BALCO, the San Francisco-area drug dispensary posing as a nutritional lab, after a raid by law enforcement officials in 2003. The investigation not only revealed her name as a client but also produced logs with her initials that appeared to detail an extensive drug regimen. Jones, like Barry Bonds and dozens of other notable athletes, testified before a federal grand jury investigating BALCO.

Before Sydney, Jones had averted the kind of suspicions that dogged so many star athletes in her sport, if only because she had always been such a dominant sprinter. As a California schoolgirl she routinely won titles against older runners. But she did run afoul of her sport's drug policies as a teenager, receiving a suspension and facing a four-year ban after missing a random drug test when she failed to inform officials of her whereabouts. Lawyer Johnnie Cochran successfully argued for her reinstatement.

Even though Jones fell short of her Olympic goals, Sydney should have been the crowning moment in her career. But most reporters wound up marveling less at her achievements than at how she accomplished so much despite distractions. The biggest was her husband at that time, C. J. Hunter, who had qualified for the Olympics in the shot put but had been sidelined by injury. However, early in the Olympic competition, it was revealed that he had actually tested positive for steroids. In the middle of her competition, Jones took an awkward stab at a "stand by my man" performance at a press conference. But it was hard to fathom how she could live and train with her husband without being aware of his transgressions or, worse, cheating too. And those questions began to overshadow her performance.

Now the questions center on what will become of the medals she did win. In 1988 Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson was stripped of his 100m gold medal from that year's Seoul Games after he tested positive for drugs. His medal was given to Carl Lewis, the American who had originally taken silver. At the moment, the International Olympic Committee has not made a ruling about Jones's medals. Before any decisions are made, there will be a series of hearings with the International Association of Athletics Federation and the IOC's disciplinary committee, which could take years. If the IOC does decide to give Jones's medals to her runner-ups, one of them will land in the hands of Ekaterini Thanou, a Greek sprinter who finished second to Jones in the 100m in Sydney and was herself involved in a doping scandal at the 2004 Athens Olympics after she failed to show up for a drug test. She withdrew from the games and was later suspended. The gold for the 200m might then be handed off to Pauline Davis-Thompson of the Bahamas, who hasn't been implicated in any drug scandal.