Until this week, I had forgotten about Marion Jones and her denials of using performance enhancing drugs. This week she joins the ranks of other infamous lying sport stars who have watched their careers incinerate before their eyes.
Marion has been lying about this for six years and it is going to cost her dearly. She has had to return her five medals from the 2000 Olympic games and will also have to pay back hundreds of thousands of dollars in prize money she has collected over that time frame. Oh yeah she is sorry. She did as most of the sports stars have done. She went on TV and said she was sorry and ashamed and cried a bit more than most of the other infamous liars.
What is worst though....and it does get worse......the teammates that were on two of the winning relay teams may be forced to give back their medals as well. After all, they won as a team with Marion's help. Fair? No...I don't think so but unfortunately I think it is the legitimate thing to do. I realize that these other women were not aware of her drug use and may feel that they should not be penalized. However, the team that they won on was tainted and all of those medals deserve to go to the team who played the sport honestly. I realize that the other women gave their "all" and performed an honest race....however.....would they have won it without Marion? That's a hard thing to say.
If Marion did not hand over her medals, nor was asked to, I would feel a little differently about the rest of the team not handing over their medals. I realize that the feelings run deep on this one. They are in shock about all this but ultimately do they want to say....."this is my medal from the 2000 Olympic relay team which was strickened from the record books." It may be that they say.....ok...you can keep the medals but they are not legitimate because we are now recognizing Greece in the books as winning the Gold medal.
Fairness or doing the right thing?
3 comments:
What I'm not understanding, for lack of time to research, is at the time of the medal win, was it against the Olympic rules to use those particular enhancers? If not, I'd say, let it stand. I understand, based on what little reading I've done--the other athletes were probably doing it too, they just hadn't been caught.
This has nothing to do with the blog, but my grandmother was named Marion Jones. So when this news goes on, I think of her.
Thanks for the comments Martin. :)
I look forward to meeting you in May 2008.
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