Athletics in the News

Mountain Climbs: 2008 Will be Tough to Surpass

2008-12-31T10:57:00.019+01:00

By Eric.

The proverb from George Washington was that if you don't learn from history, you're doomed to repeat it. Considering what banner year track and field had during this, the finest-ever championship season, then let doom, gloom and gnashing of teeth await me tomorrow as I embark on a new year arm-chair quarterbacking this sport.

Ok, let fools not rush in so quickly.

I can deal without all of the Russian doping drama in any of its various forms. The lesson learned with Yelena Soboleva is that no matter how stunning an athlete can be on the track, one shouldn't be so willing to trust that a Russian who wins a championship or sets a world record has done so fairly. Gosh, I didn't just paint their programme with such a wide brush, did I?

Elena Isinbaeva, who set three world records this year - one indoor and two outdoor, is also Russian, so let's re-think that. How about only trusting Russians who train in the IAAF's backyard and who compete often on the Grand Prix circuit. That should do.

Well, almost. Gulnara Samitova, who set an Olympic record in the steeplechase preliminaries and a world record in the final, is also Russian, and accomplished a first-ever for the sport: she became the first - and only - woman to break the nine-minute barrier in the steeplechase. Let Gulnara repeat that history once this upcoming season before the jury reaches a decision on that one.

Enough.

As for the rest of history not repeating itself part, I'm ready for the shock and awe treatment and the terror on the track which may make my heart stop... are you? The bigger question I would like to pose to you is if you can handle any more of history being re-written.

In Susanna Kallur's case, I certainly wish that history could have again been re-written indoors, as she smashed the world indoor 60m hurdles record in Karlsruhe, Germany on 10-February.

By the time the eight women-strong final would take place, at 16.42 Central European Time, nearly every resident in Sweden had their televisions tuned to Eurosport or had their radios turned on to a newscast either waiting to watch history unfold literally in the blink of an eye, or to be interrupted from milking cows and shoveling snow if only for a minute to let out a loud "yes!"

American Lolo Jones, who would go on to win the world indoor championships the following month, broke the 19-year-old meet record with a 7,87 run in the first heat. Sanna, blocking out the distractions and focussed on her own plan, erupted for a 7,78 in the following heat.

An entire stadium erupted in cheer when the gun sounded. Sanna Kallur had a decent reaction to the gun and started off quickly toward the first hurdle. She flew over all of the barriers between the start and the finish tape, and, with her lean at the finish, flew through a barrier which had stood since Sanna was but seven years old.

The clock stopped at 7,68 seconds -- a time 1/100th of a second faster than the previous world-record, and the first time Sanna had broken the 7,80-second barrier.

Sanna stared at the clock a moment, not knowing if the time would be adjusted up or down, as often occurs when the official time is given.

When the official time was announced, Sanna Kallur, who tured 27-years-old five days later, realised she had broken the world record, and was immediately congratulated by Damu Cherry, an athlete who had been previously banned for two years for steroids abuse. Sanna didn't appear enthused to embrace the controversial hurdler, but shook her hand, nonetheless.

Then she took her laps of honour in front of a class of people who had assembled for the possibility that they again would witness history on German soil.

Jones placed second in 7,77 seconds, the 10th-fastest ever recorded. So loaded was the field that six of the seven finishers set new personal bests in the race.

That Sanna would catch and pass a ghost of the sport's past in her fourth meet of the season was not remotely in her thoughts before the race began, and her reaction to her time and place in history says it all.

"This is absolutely unbelievable," the IAAF reported. "I can’t put my feelings into words. In comparison with my race last week in Stuttgart, today was much better."

Engquist would later send her congratulations to Sanna through a message she sent to Sportbladet, the sports division at tabloid newspaper Aftonbladet. Sanna also spoke with Jenny Kallur and received an SMS congratulation from Christian Olsson, who has the world indoor triple jump record.

Said Engquist through Aftonbladet:

"Sanna! An emornously big congratulations for a fantastic and well-deserved record. I wish now that you will be injury-free, for then you will win the Olympics."

However, as history would have it, Sanna Kallur would face injury at the world indoor championships and, ultimately, be unable to finish her marquee event at the Olympics. That she is skipping the 2009 indoor season, and not allowing herself to re-write history, may change her luck outdoors for the better.

Barely four months past Beijing, and Bolt's coach is talking two more world records for his pupil. And Bolt's eating that up, one word at a time. The Guiness Book of World Records has barely had enough time to etch Bolt's name in their annual, and the Jamaican superstar is already making a reservation for a spot in the 2009 edition.

So is Isinbaeva, the greatest female jumper with a stick to ever grace the earth.

Isinbaeva has improved her personal best each and every year since she began vaulting indoors in 1999. She has won ever major championship since taking home the bronze medal at the 2003 IAAF World Championships, and 2008 was no disappointment for the former gymnast from Volgograd. Isinbaeva had become the first female vaulter to ever clear the 5-metre barrier, when, in 2005, she jumped a world record 5,01m at the world championships in Helsinki. Unfortunately for Isinbaeva, she set a mark which would take her three more years to eclipse.

As the final hours draw near on the greatest championship year in modern history, I'll gladly look the other way on the subject of Usain Bolt as he prepares to assault the two individual world records he produced in Beijing. I'm keen on pretending that his coach, Glen Mills, didn't tell the Italians today that Bolt can run 9.58 and sub-19.00, for in so doing, I'm bound to let history take us by surprise again come Berlin.

The question is, can Bolt learn from history and not repeat it?

If Bolt, who notoriously slowed during the final stages of the Olympic 100m final in a demonstration of boyish showmanship which drew the ire of International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge, runs full speed ahead from naught to the finish line, he won't simply make history, he'll leave a mark and time which shouldn't be broken for a quarter century at least.

Come to think of it, however, that is what was said of Michael Johnson's former record as well.

Eight hours remain between a clean sheet of paper and one covered with accomplishment greater than the 1988 Olympics and the 1993 IAAF World Championships where the world's finest graced tracks in Seoul, Korea and Stuttgart, Germany with four new world records and tied one other one.

Furthermore, 2008 will soon conclude with new world records in eight men's disclipines and five female ones around the tracks, in the fields and on the roads. And that was just outdoors. Isinbaeva and Kallur did the world a favour by claiming world records indoors, respectively.

The world championships are headed back to Germany in eight months.

The Latest on Your Favourite Stars

2008-12-27T15:31:00.028+01:00

By Eric.

You want to know what the stars are up to, so sit back this week-end, catch up on the latest news about the movers and shakers in the athletics world, and check back for the New Year's special on Monday night.

The latest on many of your favourite athletes in the sport of track and field:

Abebe Dinkesa ran what was described as "a mind-boggling" 41.45 11,5km race on 29-November to win the $50,000 first prize money and also set a new course record in the 4th Obudu International Mountain Race - a steep and hilly course which has never yielded a defending male champion in the meet's history.

Alan Webb, the American-record holder in the mile who failed to advance past the US Olympic Trials in the 1.500m, was signing red t-shirts and providing his support on 27-December at the Friends of Indoor Track Invitational at Prince George's Sports & Learning Complex in Landover, MD, where nearly 1,300 supporters signed a petition to be forwarded to members of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors to save indoor track from the chopping blocks for local high school students. At issue is whether or not indoor track is necessary as Fairfax County Public Schools faces a $170 million shortfall in its 2010 budget, though track costs only $50/student according to Dan Woolley, FIT president.

Allyson Felix has been quiet this off-season, with planned time-off giving her much-needed rest from the Olympic preparations she and Bob Kersee put in last year. Felix, who travelled to Jamaica on holiday during the off-season, hosted her family for Christmas last week. Felix, the defending 200m world champion, is in a long-repetition training phase she gears up for the 2009 World Championships.

Andréas Thorkildsen, the two-time Olympic javelin champion, was awarded the gold medal for the ‘Performance of the Year' by Norwegian daily newspaper Aftenposten at a ceremony organised by the Norwegian Ministry of Culture in November. The sports Journalist Association of Norway also presented a statuette to Thorkildsen for becoming the Performer of the Year in Norwegian sport.

Andrew Hinds, heir apparent to Obadele Thompson: "My plan for next year is to make an impact at the World Championships and I am looking forward to the European circuit, but my goal next year is to break the sub-ten barrier. I think I have got in me to run 9.9.

"I am doing some serious hard training right now. My work-outs are now more intense as the aim is to get stronger. I am doing more weight-training and will be better prepared .

"I would like to clock under ten seconds before the World Championships and hopefully repeat it in Germany," said Hinds, who is back home on vacation.

Anna Chicherova was spotted with other high-profile athletes and dignitaries at a Real Madrid match on 18-December, but not the famed Spanish team of the football variety. Russian basketball team CSKA were playing the Spanish basketball team in Moscow in an epic showdown which Real Madrid won in front of the Russian hosts in stunning play. Chicherova is confirmed for competitions to be held in two Czech cities, Trinec (21 Jan) and Hustopece on (24 Jan) in what is known as the Moravia High Jump Tour.

Asafa Powell, the greatest Grand Prix sprinter to never win an individual global title, has not yet responded to Michael Johnson's public statements and assertions that Powell does not know how to handle his nerves and focus - two keys to Powell's inability to win the big ones (World Championships and Olympics). Johnson, who believes he can help Powell, has stated that the biggest mistake an athlete can make is deluding him/herself into thinking that there is no pressure. Dwain Chambers backs Powell to win a medal before the end of his career.

Glen Mills, the coach of Jamaica’s triple Olympic champion and sprint double world record holder Usain Bolt, is also hopeful that Asafa Powell can shake off his major championships disappointments and win some accolades before his career is over, but warned that with Bolt around, Powell's time is running short.

Augustine Choge will kick-start his cross country campaign on 10-January at the Great Edinburgh International Cross Country meeting in Scotland. Choge, who finished 12th at last year's World Cross Country Championships in Edinburgh, has not raced since finishing 10th in the 1.500m final in Beijing.

Berhane Adere, who faltered in the Beijing Olympic marathon, is scheduled to defend her Standard Chartered Dubai Marathon title next month, one year after setting a course record (2.22.42) and collecting $250,000 in the process. Adere, who is in a class by herself, should only face challenges from Bezenushe Bekele and Askale Tafa Magarsa.

Bernard Lagat will attempt to tie the Wanamaker Mile win-record of seven owned by legendary Irish great Eamonn Coghlan when he competes 30-January at the 102nd Millrose Games at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Lagat will then turn his focus to Europe, where he will be targeting his fourth win at the Aviva Grand Prix in Birmingham on 21-February, where he will run the 1.500m.

Bershawn Jackson has spent part of his off-season visiting children and providing advice to work hard, stay in school and never lose sight of their dreams - words of wisdom he provided kids at Hillcrest Elementary School in Somerset. "You have to face adversity and overcome it," he told the students. "Champions don't give up, and I consider myself a champion. I made history because I worked hard and I trained hard."

Blanka Vlasic is rested and ready for the 2009 season following a disappointing Olympic silver medal and her second-consecutive Golden League season jackpot miss. Vlasic will have another shot at the $1M jackpot as the IAAF announced the women's high jump will be part of the 2009 campaign. Vlasic was recognised last week in Zagreb with a Croatian Olympic Committee award, a distinction she was not expecting, but one upon which she promised to deliver in the future. Vlasic will have an opportunity to jump against Ariane Friedrich at the BW Bank Meeting in Karlsruhe on 16-February and avenge for the one loss the German had against Vlasic in 2008, causing her to lose her share ($500.000) of the Golden League Jackpot.

Carolina Klüft travelled to Addidas Ababa Ethiopia late last month to be part of the Great Ethiopian Run - a race which UNICEF is a partner to help raise awareness and funds to fight HIV/AIDS in Ethiopia. Klüft, a UNICEF ambassador, lended her support to the fundraising project, one which helps orphans and vulnerable children through the "Dream Campaign" by raising about $11.000 for four charity homes. Klüft was there on a similar visit in the winter of 2006. Trackside, Klüft, who followed her one-week visit to Ethiopia with a training camp in Potchestrom, has again opted to skip the heptathlon, which means that the 2009 IAAF World Championships - as were the Beijing Olympics - will be contested without the second-best ever in the event. Klüft will tackle the long jump event, one which she sees as a challenge.

Svenska Dagbladet stated on 27-December that Klüft was the smartest and bravest athlete in Sweden in 2008. Moreover, Klüft was picked by the Swedish public as being the number one favourite athlete in 2008 ahead of Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

Said Klüft:

I think I would have answered both "Sanna" and "Zlatan". Peter Forsborg seems to also be very sympathetic. But it isn't easy, and one is influenced, naturally, if one has a personal relationship with other athletes. Anja Pärson is also an athlete whom I like, and I met the handball girls during the Olympics in Beijing. There are so many great athletes with different conditions, that it is difficult to compare.

Chris Brown, after finishing in the unbearable fourth place position at the last three major championships, is hoping for some good fortunes at next year’s IAAF World Championships in Berlin, Germany. He is taking things a day at a time in search for an elusive medal and a podium spot.

"My main goal is to make the podium in Berlin at the World Championships," Brown said. "Already on three occasions I have had the bronze taken from me.

"I guess the Lord has something bigger in store for me so I am taking it one day at a time," he added.

Christian Malcolm was denied a true opportunity to earn a medal in the 200m according to Linford Christie, Malcolm's coach who is banned from any Olympic team contact for a positive drugs test late in his career. Christie claimed last week that UK Athletics and the BOA didn’t give Malcolm the chance to prepare as best as he possibly could. Nevertheless, UK Athletics paid Christie to coach the world and Olympic finalist in the run-up to Beijing despite the fact that Christie was prevented from accompanying the Olympic squad to either the athletes' holding camp in Macau or the Games themselves.

Christine Ohuruogu's stock continues to rise, with Lord Sebastian Coe this week naming Ohuruogu, the Olympic 400m champion and defending IAAF world champion, his sporting hero of 2008. On a side note, Ohuruogu recently donated a pair of her trainers to an art work which will be a representation of the shoes which people who perished at Nazi concentration camps were made to remove before they died.

Doping: ProCon.org, a nonpartisan 501c3 nonprofit research organization, created a new website, http://sports.procon.org, to explore the question "Should performance enhancing drugs (such as steroids) be accepted in sports?"

The online project contains nearly 30 questions about drugs in sports with over 250 sourced responses from more than 200 sports experts. Those experts include professional athletes (from Lance Armstrong to Gene Upshaw), doping authorities (from Dr. Don Catlin to Dr. Gary Wadler), sports writers, academics, physicians, league commissioners, politicians, and many other knowledgeable sports fans.

Some subjects of discussion include whether or not:

* Tiger Woods' alleged LASIK surgery to improve his vision to 20/15 is ethically different than an athlete taking a banned substance

* there is a correlation between the 5% (approximate) of middle schoolers who take anabolic steroids and the use of such substances by their athlete role models

* the testing labs, such as the one that found cyclist Floyd Landis guilty of using banned drugs, are credible and reliable

* the teammates of sprinter Marion Jones should return their Olympic gold medals. None of them tested positive for banned drugs although Jones confessed to having used them.

Dorcus Inzikuru, the former world steeplechase champion, refused to testify last week in a personal assault case where she was a principle witness and plaintiff against her husband and brother-in-law. Both defendants were attributed to have stated two days before their arrests that they would kill Inzikuru, with Inzikuru's husband charged with physically assaulting and harming her. The case was dismissed.

Jenn Stuczynski, the Olympic silver medalist in the pole vault, has become a Christmas ornament - a silver bulb in her local area with a picture of Stuczynski participating in the pole vault. The decorative pieces sold out before Christmas, and more were on the way.

On the track, Stuczynski was yesterday confirmed for participation in the upcoming Millrose Games.

Jeremy Wariner is training and looking ahead to London 2012 according to today's Star-Telegram. "It’s a good way for me to relieve a lot of stress," he says about running. "When I’m on the track, I forget about everything else that’s going on. So it’s a good place for me to get away from things and just be me and enjoy myself."

Johan Wissman is currently training 11 times a week in order to gain more strength needed to reach the goals he has for the 400m. Wissman is scheduled to contest the GE Galan here in Stockholm 18-February - the second-best indoor meet in the world (Stuttgart). Wissman returned to Helsingborg yesterday following three weeks of winter training at his "home away from home" in Stellenbosch, South Africa.

Kara Goucher will visit the City of Duluth (MN) Wellness Committee program on Tuesday, 30-December, to honour city exercisers. Goucher, home in Minnesota for the holiday season, is preparing for the Boston Marathon following a successful debut in New York.

Kelly Sotherton is currently training to take part in all three of the major UK Athletics indoor events in 2009, starting with the Aviva International Match at Glasgow on 31-January. Sotherton will then compete at the Aviva European Trials on 14-15 February in Sheffield, before taking on Olympic Champion Natalia Dobrynska in Birmingham in the 60m hurdles, long jump and 400m.

Kim Collins is preparing for the upcoming Aviva Internternational Match in Scotland, where the ex-world 100m champion will contest the 60m and 200m events at Glasgow's Kelvin Hall on 31-January.

Kim Gevaert, though now retired from athletics, was recently named along with Justine Henin as goodwill ambassadors for the Belgium and Netherlands bid to co-host the 2018 World Cup.

Lisa Dobriskey trained twice on Christmas Day - a Thursday - as she always does, and is more than determined to make up for the bitter disappointment she felt when she placed out of medal contention in Beijing. Despite heading into the Olympics full of optimism, Dobriskey finished fourth in the Beijing 1.500m final.

Liu Xiang's recovery from achiles surgery is going well, as he has now been able to walk without crutches - though he is still required to wear a special shoe. He'll be able to walk in the pool in two weeks according to his coach, Sun Haiping, accompanying Liu during his U.S. rehabilitation. Yao Ming has requested Liu receive space and time to heal.

Lolo Jones was named Visa Humanitarian Athlete of the Year earlier this month for her help in assisting flood victims in her home state of Iowa.

Nick Willis will compete in a Wellington (NZ) street race on 10-March before competing in a mile race at an international track and field competition three days later in Christchurch.

Richard Thompson, the Beijing silver medallist (9,89) in the 100m behind Usain Bolt's world-record (9,69), earned $750,000 cash and $250,000 in units from Unit Trust Corporation in Trinidad last week as a reward for his accomplishments in the 100m and 4x100m relay, which set a national record (38,06). Thompson, the NCAA indoor 60m champion and outdoor 100m winner, resumed training 3-November, and stated to Trinidad's Newsday that the 4x100m relay team will race together several times next season.

Stefan Holm has ended his career in grand fashion - at least nationally. Holm, the fourth-place finisher at the Beijing Olympics, was last week selected Sweden's best track and field athlete for the first time in his career.

Steph Twell, the three-time European Junior Cross Country champion, will be racing in the Antrim International Cross Country - the third meeting in this winter’s UK Cross Challenge series - on 3-January.

Susanna Kallur, who finished second in balloting to Stefan Holm for Sweden's best track and field athlete, has split with coach Karin Torneklint. Torneklint, who coached Sanna and her sister, Jenny from 14-15 years old and joined forces again with them in 2004, left the training solely to Torbjörn Eriksson, who had different training philosophies than did Torneklint.

Usain Bolt is in almost every news story of note at the moment as the doors prepare to close on 2008 and the year which produced a record season which likely will never be repeated. Bolt took delivery of a BMW M3 (reported here earlier this week) just before Christmas, and was recently selected Track & Field News Athlete of the Year.

Victor Conte is in the news this week because he stated he supplied "the cream" and "the clear" to somebody, somewhere... one has lost count to the claims Conte has made.

Usain Bolt's Three Gifts Kept on Giving

2008-12-23T16:00:00.020+01:00

By Eric.

Christmas eve has drawn nigh, and one wonders what has been left under Usain Bolt's tree.

He has captured nearly every imaginable and conceivable award and adulation for his accomplishments in 2008, and has been handsomely rewarded with name and brand recognition which stretches around the globe.

What gift will Bolt unwrap this year which can top those he received at this time some 52 weeks ago? Is there any solitary imaginable one which could rival the six-fold one he received with his Olympic ticket, namely three gold medals and three world records to match?

If he needs a ticket to fame, he needn't look any further than a click of the mouse: Usain Bolt's name is splashed on every news feed of note, even to this day, as 2008 winds down and the fairytale season is remembered on top-10 lists in a newspaper near you.

Bolt drew the ire of International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge for showboating during the men's 100-meter dash on the biggest stage of world sport, but drew the adoration of hundreds of millions of fans for his childlike demonstration of sheer excitement for winning a race against competitors far more experienced than he.

What about just giving the man a car and some alone time following an off-season which appeared to be more hectic than his in-season travel and commitments? On second thought, hold off on that one. BMW and Puma have already teamed up and done just that. Mr. Bolt took custody of a black BMW M3 which Puma had shipped to him just before Christmas.

Perhaps a suitable gift for Bolt would be Sports Illustrated unveiling their Sportsman of the Year award, a single-copy edition which could serve as motivation for 2009—a world championship year which will be filled with higher expectations than Bolt could possibly have dreamed of when he took up the challenge of dropping down in distance this year, and tackling a man who had won his island nation's heart, captured the citizens' imaginations, but had not won any global title of note.

Sports Illustrated missed a beat when it had Michael Phelps lean ahead of Bolt to win Sportsman of the Year Award. The IAAF, Track & Field News and L'Equipe, didn't, however, each awarding the lanky Jamaican sensation its top honours, respectively.

We as fans received an extra gift this year, as the Olympic Games were held during a leap year and were kicked off on a very sacred and superstitious day for the Chinese, namely the eighth day of the eighth month of the eighth year of this century.

Eights may have been wild for the 21 percent of the world population located in the host country, but there is only a single integer which will remain in the history annals for all-time, whether or not the times, themselves, are lowered by Usain Bolt—and that is the number "one".

Try these on for size:

Usain Bolt ended the 2008 season as the number one sprinter in the 100m.
Usain Bolt ended the 2008 season as the number one sprinter in the 200m.
Usain Bolt ended the 2008 season as the world record-holder in the 100m.
Usain Bolt ended the 2008 season as the world record-holder in the 200m.
Usain Bolt ended the 2008 season as history's quickest from 0-100m.
Usain Bolt ended the 2008 season as history's quickest from 0-10 under 10,00.
Usain Bolt ended the 2008 season with the greatest cumulative average for his top-10.
Usain Bolt also ended the 2008 season with one loss, bringing full-circle the true value of that number.

Taking a closer look, Bolt ended the 2008 season with the best average time for his top-10 races in a season, though Asafa Powell ran the season of his life as well:

1. Usain Bolt, JAM, 2008 -- 9.820 (9.69, 9.72, 9.76, 9.77, 9.83, 9.85, 9.85, 9.89, 9.92, 9.92)
2. Asafa Powell, JAM, 2008 -- 9.837 (9.72, 9.77, 9.82, 9.82, 9.83, 9.87, 9.87, 9.88, 9.89, 9.90)
3. Asafa Powell, JAM, 2006 -- 9.867 (9.77, 9.77, 9.85, 9.85, 9.86, 9.86, 9.89, 9.91, 9.95, 9.96)

Powell needed to run 9.81 and 9.80 in his final two races in order to drop 9.90 and 9.91 from his top-10 and finishes, .01 ahead of Bolt's top-10 season average—no easy feat, despite one's willpower; the season had already been long enough, the Olympics had come and gone, and the chances at redemption were slimming down.

Powell failed in those attempts at the World Athletics Final (9.87) and at Pedro's Cup (9.89), however, he did conclude his season by running exceptionally well, stopping the clock under 9.90 in seven consecutive races. Moreover, Powell was able to legally stop the clock under 10.00 on 15 occasions in 2008—seven more than he did in 2007, and three more than in 2006 when he twice ran world-record times of 9.77 seconds.

In keeping with the integer "one", here's one more: Only one other man in history has been able to run faster without stopping than the sum (19.41) of Bolt's top-two 100m times, a man whom Bolt removed from atop the totem pole in the men's 200m dash and carved his name with the immortal ones who have defied belief.

358 days ago, the New Year's bells were clanging, many fans were set out for their festivities and the favourite to win the Olympic 100m and 200m titles—as well as the 4x100m title, was prepping for his spring campaign, one which would see him run excellent 4x100m relay legs in order to race into shape without laying down the hammer ahead of the strenuous rounds he'd have to endure at the USA Olympic Trials, and again in Beijing if everything went well.

It didn't matter that his name was Tyson Gay, and he was fresh off of winning three gold medals at the IAAF World Championships in Osaka, Japan—two individual ones and a team gold in the short relay—he still had to put in the work, perfect his timings and hope that he'd have it all on the days which mattered.

Another man was attempting to find a magic formula to enable his own successes, despite the fact that he was entering the season as the 100m world-record holder (9.74, Rieti). Asafa Powell put on excellent displays of speed at stadiums around the globe, but he'd never managed to win the big one when it counted. He was hoping 2008 would provide that break-through, rather than relegating him to just a great Grand Prix racer.

Then there was Bolt, a young man who was entering the new year 138 days past his 21st birthday, setting his sights on a 400m workout to start his season, then working his way down to the 100m, a distance his coach promised he could attempt in a season which turned out to be the finest in the history of athletics for male sprinting.

Usain Bolt upped the ante early, running a 46.94 400m on an ugly day in the Jamaican capital on Jan. 26. Bolt won the 10th heat with the fastest time of the day—running 1.66 off his lifetime best set on the exact same day a year earlier. He also defeated Powell (48.76) as he had the year before.

Powell's finish behind Bolt wasn't yet an omen of things to come, as he had managed to outclass his younger competitor in the overall rankings at the end of the 2007 season, but it was the start of something Powell would become quite accustomed to seeing the rest of the 2008 season, namely Bolt's back.

Powell didn't see Bolt's back at the Melbourne Grand Prix in February, winning his signature event, the 100m, in a modest 10.04 seconds. He'd shaken off the dust from the previous year and competed very well despite a nagging injury he carried during training down in Australia. Powell would wait an additional four months to the date before he'd next step on the track for a 100m race, though he would team up with two of the eventual three teammates he'd share 4x100m glory with in Beijing for an early 39.22 clocking in Kingston on March 22.

Expectations for Bolt, meanwhile, were beginning to rise as the world junior 200m record-holder had accepted an invitation to compete in his first-ever senior 100m dash, with Spanish Town serving as host to what would be Bolt's launch into immortality—er, the record books. American Michael Johnson's half-lap record was once thought untouchable. Bolt finished first in the 100m dash that day—March 8—speeding to a very respectable 10.03 seconds.

Gay, the hands-down favourite to win the coveted title of "world's fastest man," meanwhile, played anchor to three four-by-one relay teams, helping the United States win the Texas Relays in 38.63 seconds, an adidas all-star team capture the Mt. Sac Relays (38.51), and bringing home another national team to a fourth-place finish at the Penn Relays (39.38).

Seven weeks of training and focus—coupled with an apetite to push his tall frame under the 10-second barrier in front of his home crowd—led Bolt to the starting line at the Jamaica Invitational on May 3. Many of the world's major players were at the meet, with Wallace Spearmon—Bolt's 200m nemesis—as well as Darvis Patton, Kim Collins, and Mike Rodgers in Bolt's heat, and Gay opting for the 200m dash.

That Bolt would win the premiere event of the day against the Americans was fathomable—he entered with the fastest time of the year in the field. That Bolt would scream through the 10.00 barrier, under 9.90, and well under 9.80 in his second professional race is another "first" for the history books. Bolt stopped the finish-line clock at 9.76 seconds—only 0.02 seconds off of Powell's world record, and the second-fastest clocking in history. No man had ever chopped so much time off his personal best whilst crossing the magical 10-flat barrier, and no man's margin of victory—0.32 seconds—had been larger.

Bolt was suddenly thrust into contention for the heavyweight title of track and field, the coveted 100m title. Gay took exactly 20 seconds to go from 0-200m without stopping, but the attention had clearly shifted to Bolt, who would agree to a man-to-man 100m sprint to be contested against Gay and others in New York exactly four weeks later.

Bolt had another appearance to make ahead of that scheduled stop, however, and he didn't fail to deliver, winning the Hampton Games in Trinidad on May 14 in a blistering 9.92—his second-consecutive race under 10.00 and a time which was still faster than any man had run up to that point in the season. Gay would respond with a 10.05-20.08 double victory at the adidas classic in Carson, Calif., the following day, with the 200m run into a negative 1.7 wind.

Road to Beijing: Christmas Present Number One

Countdown: T-minus 13 days to the clash of the world champion against the man who had a faster personal best, but who lost to that deserving champion over double the distance the previous year.

Bolt smashed Gay's pride, stole his thunder and erased Powell from the record books in one fell swoop on the 31st day (+1) of May in New York, crossing the line first at 9.72 seconds—a 0.04 improvement over his previous best; his third consecutive race under 10.00; more than 1/10th of a second ahead of Gay's best (9.84); and the fastest ever legally run on American soil.

Gay, who won the 2007 edition in a windy 9.76 (+2.2 m/s), finished with a superb 9.85 clocking, but was left to concern himself with the upcoming USA Olympic Trials. The night in New York belonged to Bolt, the man who was attempting to become the world's fastest.

You know the rest of the drill for Gay: he reigned supreme in the USA Olympic Trials, the timing system in Eugene, Ore., came under heavy suspicion from pundits, Gay was carted off the track during his 200m qualifying, and he disappeared until such time that the Oympics were to commence—where eights were straight, ones were wild and Usain Bolt wasn't playing by conventional rules.

OK, Gay did a bit more than run wild at his national championships, he broke through with monstrous performances in the quarters, semi-final and final, where he ran a personal best 9.77 (qf), followed up with a 9.85w in his semi, and recorded history's fastest under all conditions, a 9.68 (+4,1 m/s)—removing Marion Jones' husband, Obadele Thompson, as the title holder.

Bolt opened his Olympic experience with a 10.20 and 9.95 during his first two races, and followed those up with a 9.85 semi-final run—his third race in 24 hours with the final coming a few hours later. That he would not only blow logic out of the window during the final with his 9.69 after easing during the latter half of the race, but would run nearly as fast as had Gay had with a hurricane wind behind him and equal the second-fastest under any conditions, was unreal, unbelievable, and ultimately un-human.

Somewhere in the middle of it all was Asafa Powell, who, again, failed to win the big one despite the incredible in-season CV (9.88 victory over Bolt here in Stockholm and a 9.82 final tune-up in Monaco) he brought to the final.

Christmas Present Number Two For Bolt

Bolt, who has a penchant for speed and a need to demonstrate it—he was able to test his new M3 at the BMW Vehicle Test Facility in Aschheim, near Münich following the Olympics—didn't disappoint in the 200m, either, despite the media frenzy and circus which followed his coronation as world's fastest man.

One day before his 22nd birthday, Bolt, contesting his fifth 200m final of the season—the previous four were all victories, and each under 20.00 (three under 19.90, two under 19.80 and one under 19.70), flew off the curve on a mission to the finish line, driving, pumping and leaning with all of his might as the clock read 19.30, a new world record.

Michael Johnson, once accused of having his braids twirled too tightly during some trash-talking with Maurice Greene back during their heated rivalry, meet Usain Bolt, who had been accused of show-boating and not respecting his competitors. Mr. Bolt has just taken over your record, one which many a fan stated would last their lifetimes.

Christmas Present Number Three

Finally, as the season of giving is upon us, and was so at this time last year, let's think about the third and final gift Usain Bolt left the sport in Beijing, namely the best demonstration of speed, willpower, teamwork and hand-offs to ever circle once around a track. Ever.

Puma threw Bolt a great birthday bash during the heart of the Olympic Games. Their man delivered on the grandest stage of them all, and the company was not at all reluctant to reward their superstar with a grand bash which included Asafa Powell and others. Following Bolt's birthday, however, it was back to business for one final event on the track: the 4x100m relay.

Jamaica, which made it through the semi-final unscathed as they watched the Americans fail to finish due to botched hand-offs, fielded a team of Nesta Carter, Michael Frater, Usain Bolt, and Asafa Powell. As previously mentioned, Powell, Carter, and Frater had contested this event on two previous occasions, with Bolt, the Olympic champion, being the replacement guy on the team.

The initial stages of the race are a blur—something which Youtube has enabled me to recollect for later use. That's of least consequence here, however, as the third leg—which Usain Bolt ran to hand off to Asafa Powell—must have been the fastest curve ever run by anyone under any conditions, stick or sans. Bolt, passing off the baton to Powell, came up on his countryman and friend with a fury, full of run, up to his neck in foot speed and with a mouth full of encouragement for his teammate unrated for general viewing here. He appeared to be running with Powell for several metres as Powell began the descent home, and may have held off the remaining competition had he taken the stick and run a full 200m, instead of handing it to Powell.

Powell dug deeper than I have ever seen him do before, struggled to keep his form as he neared the finish line, with the collective crowd at the Bird's Nest roaring in delight as he leaned and stopped the clock 37.10 seconds after it began ticking on command from the firing pistol.

Bolt was part of his third world record in as many races, and his name and fame have not died down since, nor did his speed as he ended his season on high notes of 9.83-19.63-9.77 in the subsequent three meets following the Olympic Games.

I last wrote to you that I've finally taken the foot off the gas and have had an opportunity to reflect on the greatest sprint season which ever was—only to discover that 2009 is fast approaching with all of its suprises—both good and bad.

As Usain Bolt sits by an open fire and celebrates Christmas with his relatives and friends, I can only imagine what Bolt has wished for himself for the 2009 season. All of his wishes last season came true, and his gifts keep giving even as we speak and write. Scientists hope that Bolt can run completely through the finish line once at full speed, because they have predicted he can run 100m in 9.5 seconds.

Only Bolt knows what it feels like to drive that M3, loaded with 414 horse power, at full speed. Here's to hoping he will demonstrate the equivalent on the track as well.

Usain Bolt's 2008 season over 100m:

10.03 (+1.8) Classics Spanish Town 8 Mar
9.76 (+1.8) Jamaica Inv Kingston 3 May
9.92 (+0.6) HamptonG Port-of-Spain 17 May
9.72 WR (+1.7) Reebok New York NY 31 May
10.19 (+1.0) National Champs Kingston 27 Jun
9.85 (-0.1) National Champs Kingston 28 Jun
10.40 (-2,0) National Champs Kingston 28 Jun
9.89 (+0.4) DNG Stockholm 22 Jul
10.20 (-0.2) Olympics Beijing 15 Aug
9.92 (+0.1) Olympics Beijing 15 Aug
9.85 (-0.1) Olympics G Beijing 16 Aug
9.69 WR (+/- 0.0) Olympics Beijing 16 Aug
9.83 (-0.5) Weltklasse Zürich 29 Aug
9.77 (-1.3) Van Damme Bruxelles 5 Sep

Is It Already Track Season? 2008 in Review

2008-12-21T10:24:00.010+01:00

By Eric.

I don’t know about you, but I’m quite pleased the Olympics only occur once every fourth year. Any other years like the one which is winding down and has long since ended in terms of competition, and I’m not sure how much emotion, turmoil, ups and downs I’d have left in the tank to offer the sport as a fan. The summer season seemed to just conclude, and already, we’re looking at Bernard Lagat attempting to win a seventh Wannamaker Mile competition in New York in about a month.

Has it already been four years since Hicham El Guerrouj flashed two fingers up at the camera in complete disbelief that he’d won not only his first, but snuck by Kenenisa Bekele to win his second-ever Olympic gold medals in the same championships?

Was that the same Bekele who smashed the socks off his competitors in the 10.000m, and, following an additional 12,5 laps of qualifying, smashed his sly Kenyan rivals to smithereens with shifty pacing and a furious kick? Were those the same Kenyans who had to endure an indescribable hell to even reach the Olympics?

Watching Bekele come through in the 5.000m was breath-taking, but nothing took hold of my attention and belief than did the performances Usain Bolt put up individually in the short sprints and collectively with Asafa Powell and compatriots in the short relay. Four months later and quickly approaching a new year, I’ve finally let off the gas and have attempted to make sense – any – of times, marks and efforts which defied belief.

There are only so many times in a two-week time frame one has been able to listen the Russian national anthem or watch a gob-smacking number of Jamaican fans wave their hands in the air and shed tears for a boy who turned into a man by breaking two individual world records and helping his hapless team mate turn the tables on his own bitter-sweet championship record.

The Jamaican women didn’t fare too shabbily, either, one can say.

I don’t have a desire to re-hash all the happenings from this past year, but a few stand out to my liking and recollection, though others will be higher on your own personal priority lists and lodged deeper in your memory banks.

The anticipation surrounding the medal chase is so exhausting from a distance that I can only imagine what athletes must face from the indoor kick-offs to the final dash to the finish lines at a track stadium near you as they put their years of training to the test to determine if it would net them a medal in front of the world’s biggest audience. When the roof caves in and the rain falls on your parade in front of your own home fans, as it did for former 110m hurdle world-record holder Liu Xiang, the personal tragedy can be greater than one can ever imagine – even with the wildest of thoughts.

Closer up, however, that anticipation of winning was also so great, that it has caused many an athlete to turn to the darker side of sport, namely, doping, and attempt to squeeze on by through the corridors between right and wrong straight for the medal stand, lofty pay-outs and extreme adornment despite the methods by which they were to have been achieved – mark that, stolen.

Seven Russian women went down that path of destruction this season, caught in one of the largest doping conspiracies to hit the sport in the past 20 years – a time which also happened to be an Olympic year, and a location which also happened to be held in an Asian city. Ben Johnson has long since been removed from this sport, with his steroid-enabled times replaced by legal ones which raised the hair on the arms and laid the foundation for any number of clichés, questions and superlatives to be used.

Whilst on the topic of doping, let it be known that Marion Jones, who won honour and privilege by method of fraud eight years ago in Sydney, was confined to a prison unit many worlds away from the glittering flashes capturing images of greatness by athletes competing at the Bird’s Nest. She was released about two weeks following the extinguishing of the flame – a fitting image as her career can finally be extinguished and put to rest following years of denials about her involvement in performance-enhancing drugs. Six months of thinking time didn’t make Marion Jones smarter, however, it made her deny on national television in the United States in front of Oprah Winfrey that Marion Jones can and will take full and complete responsibility for her illegal actions rather than blaming someone else.

Lyudmyla Blonska, the outcast Ukrainian heptathlon competitor who was banned following a positive test in Beijing, has made it a case to blame someone else – in this case, that someone being her husband. She’s facing a lifetime ban from the sport if she is unable to clear this case with CAS. Carolina Klüft, our Swedish star who won every major heptathlon title available and decided to concentrate on the long and triple jumps this season, has been vocal about Blonska’s inclusion back in the sport following her first ban.

I didn’t get stung by the whole Marion Jones saga, but I got hit in the head and knocked over by Yelena Soboleva, instead. I picked Soboleva as my Indoor Athlete-of-the-Year on my blog following her incredulous runs at the World Indoor Championships in March, and believed with all honesty that she was competing clean. She tested clean, but with someone else’s urine. Yep, one star athlete’s chances went right down the toilet...literally.

I was anticipating a Soboleva match-up with Pamela Jelimo, the Kenyan teenager whom I can not truly describe with any adjective which correctly sums up her ability, year and mark left on this sport. Those match-ups never occurred, with Soboleva, who ran a world-leading 1.54,85 in Kazan in June, getting temporarily banned prior to the Olympics and unable to compete in the IAAF Golden League series.

That didn’t stop Jelimo, who broke on to the scene with death-defying times and eventually went on to win the Olympics, set a World Junior Record, a Kenyan National record and record one of the top-five times ever recorded for a female over two laps. Jelimo wasn’t simply precocious. She wasn’t fast in terms of having great wheels, either. She was more than dynamic, and she was more than dominant. She went from rags to riches – one million dollars richer – in one simple season which saw her line up for 15 races (including heats, rounds and finals), and win every single competition in which she entered over the 800m distance, running under 1.57,00 on nine of those occasions.

On the topic of Russian match-ups, I had two other ones to which I was greatly looking forward this season, namely those of Yuriy Borzakovskiy and Abubaker Kaki and Yelena Isinbayeva and Jenn Stuczynski in the pole vault.

Kaki, who concluded 2007 by running a solo 1.43, gained my uttermost attention this past winter season, running a world junior record in the 1.000m 10 minutes down the street at the GE Galan at Globen and then going on to win the IAAF World Indoor Championships in Spain in March. He kicked off outdoors on a high note, running a 1.42,69 at the Oslo Golden League meeting, setting up what was to be a very high expectation for great things to come on the men’s two-lap circuit.

Borzakovskiy, who anchored Russia to a national indoor record in the 4x800m this past winter, also notched a blistering time over the two-lap distance outdoors, running 1.42,79 three weeks ahead of the Beijing Olympics, and one week after setting a national record over 1.000m here in Stockholm at the DN Galan (2.15,50).

Sadly, neither athlete was anywhere near the medal stand following Wilfred Bungei’s surprise victory. I haven’t heard from Kaki since our two meetings this summer, and Borzakovskiy has vowed to return for more at the London 2012 Olympics, though by then there will be other Kaki-type athletes who will have cropped up by then, and Kaki, if he’s healthy and not burned out by then, will be the Wilson Kipketer of this generation.

First up for either athlete, will be the opportunity afforded Jelimo in 2008, namely a stab at a portion of (or all the proceeds outright of) the $1,000,0000 prize money for winning each of the Golden League competitions.

Isinbayeva, on the other hand, was one of two Russian athletes who came through for poor, selfish me this season. I’m a fan, dammit, and wanted a world record from the queen of the vault. Wow, did I get the best of two worlds this season: Isinbayeva got great competition from a gutsy challenger in Stuczynski, and Isinbayeva was able to set one world indoor record and establish three outdoor ones, culminating with an in-your-face 5.05m clearance in Beijing – some 25cm up on the American.

Olympic steeplechase champion Gulnara Galkina, was the other Russian who shone brightly in Beijing, capturing the event with history's first sub-nine clocking - a world record.

And these Olympic Games, ladies and gentlemen, were following the Olympic-size performances prep star German Fernandez put up in June in at the California State Meet and the Nike Outdoor Nationals, where, on successive occasions, he not only outclassed the best in the Class of 2008, he obliterated national federation (8.41,10) and national records (8.36,3) in the 3.200m and 2-mile, respectively. The 3.200m time was achieved following a 1.600m race which saw the lanky kid, who now attends Oklahoma State University and has already established a line of credibility on the NCAA scene, average just over 60 seconds per segment without stopping.

Prep athletes Jordan Hasay (USA Junior Record 4.14,50 in the 1.500m) and Jeffery Demps shone outstanding at the USA Olympic Trials, with Demps setting a new world junior record (the third in the group of five juniors listed here!) in the 100m at 10,01 seconds. Hasay won the girl’s 3.200m run (9.52,13) at the state meet minutes before Fernandez set chase to Dathan Ritzenhein’s Federation record, running the second-fastest time ever by a high school girl. After enduring a long season, which brought Hasay from the West Coast of the United States to the World Junior Championships in Poland, Hasay won every cross country race she entered this autumn, capping off a season of excellence by winning her second Footlocker Cross Country championship two weeks ago – three years after earning her first victory.

Usain Bolt stole (earned) the show(boating) in Beijing, becoming an instantaneous favourite the world round. The Olympics have a way of measuring your ability to succeed on exactly the right queue, and Bolt delivered. So did André Silnov, the Russian high jumper who was not initially selected for his team, delivered a world-leading 2.38m in London a month before the Games, was then selected to compete in Beijing and brought Russia joy in winning the event.

Stefan Holm, the 2004 Olympic high jump champion, won’t have any more opportunities to push his small frame through the air and take down the giants in his path – athletes like Jaroslav Rybakov, a perennial rival. Rybakov, who won a silver in Beijing to Holm’s fourth-place finish, is still very much on the scene, alive and well, and will be for some time coming. Holm, on the other hand, announced that this would be his final season, and he gave it everything he had.

Maria Mutola, the evergreen of the 800m crop, did, as well.

Christian Olsson, our triple jump specialist and 2004 gold medal winner, is also at a cross-road in his career, one which has been terrorised by injury since his winning jump in Athens four years ago. Olsson, like Holm, may have taken his final jumps on the field.

There were also a lot of disappointing moments in 2008, with Blanka Vlasic holding top spot in that category. Vlasic, who had a 20-plus win-streak going heading into Beijing, lost her bid to add an Olympic crown to her world title, as Tia Hellebaut, who is now retired and expecting a baby, earned the coveted crown in a magnificent fashion – and at a personal best height (2.05m). Vlasic eventually lost out on the Golden League jackpot as well, one which Jelimo was able to keep completely to herself as she headed back to Kenya following the season finale in Germany.

Susanna Kallur and LoLo Jones, two of the year’s best 100m hurdlers – with Kallur the world indoor record-holder and Jones, the fastest outdoors, both running into troubles over the hurdles in Beijing and being knocked from their four-year goals of making it to the medal stand. The semi-final was a bitter moment for Kallur, as she had to again endure a defeat at the hands of circumstance rather than the competition; Kallur also had an injury during the world indoor championships in March and missed the final, which Jones won.

There were a thousand small wonders in the world of athletics which made the 2008 season special, unique and a memorable one, for sure.

Did it honestly take me this long to mention LaShawn Merritt’s accomplishments in the 400m? Undisputed heavyweight champion at 400m over the previous Olympic champion, Jeremy Wariner. Or Dayron Robles in the men’s 110m hurdles? Rachid Ramzi’s perfection when it counted in Beijing, despite his show-boat semi-final?

Turning the attention back to the women, has it taken this long to speak of Veronica Campbell over Allyson Felix, with the former running a 21,74 in the Olympic 200m final? Christine Ohuruogu in the women’s 400m after falters at the shorter sprints appeared to have derailed her plans? Last, and not least, the efforts two other Ethiopians, Tirunesh Dibaba and Meseret Defar, put up in the 5.000m and/or 10.000m this summer? When will they feed off one another instead of ducking? Will the 14-minute barrier be breached if they worked collaboratively?

What will 2009 hold which can surpass this past season in overall greatness and provide an even greater degree of amazement? Is it fair to put this expectation on the sport, the athletes and the meeting arrangers?

Will more athletes like Craig Mottram, who broke off a working relationship with his coach, follow suit as Jeremy Wariner did earlier in the year? Will Alan Webb, the world's fastest miler in 2007 who did not advance to the Olympic Games, finally split with a coach who has mentored him since high school? As American distance runners continue migrating west to Eugene, will any superstars here in Europe join forces? Then again, we don't have many superstars left, so we're waiting on the Africans to trek here for spring cleaning.

I got my world record(s) from Isinbayeva, and Bolt single-handedly brought back life, spunk and a punkishness to the sport which it desperately needed in terms of a face-lift from the past. Can he run faster than 9,69 and/or 19,30 this season, and, if he does, how much faster? Would it be a failure if he doesn’t achieve those marks, but still wins the IAAF World Championships?

Time will tell in more ways than one.

____________________

2008 Season-Leaders (Final):

Men

100m. 9,69 WR Usain Bolt JAM
200m. 19,30 WR Usain Bolt JAM
400m. 43,75 LaShawn Merritt USA
800m. 1.42,69 Abubaker Kaki SUD
1500m. 3.31,49 Daniel Kipchirchir Komen KEN
Mile. 3.49,38 Andy Baddeley GBR
3.000m. 7.31,83 Edwin Soi KEN
5.000m. 12.50,18 Kenenisa Bekele ETH
10.000m. 26.25,97 Kenenisa Bekele ETH
Mar. 2.03.59 WR Haile Gebrselassie ETH
3.000SC. 8.00,57 Paul Kipsiele Koech KEN
110mH. 12,87 WR Dayron Robles CUB
400mH. 47,25 Angelo Taylor USA
HJ. 2,38 Andrey Silnov RUS
PV. 6,04 Brad Walker USA
LJ. 8,73 Irving Saladino PAN
TJ. 17,67 Nelson Évora POR
SP. 22,12 Adam Nelson USA
DT. 71,88 Gerd Kanter EST
HT. 84,51 Ivan Tikhon BLR
JT. 90,57 Andreas Thorkildsen NOR
Dec. 8832 Bryan Clay USA
20KM W. 1.16.43 Sergey Morozov RUS
50KM W. 3.34.14 WR Denis Nizhegorodov RUS
4x100m. 37,10 WR JAM
4x400m. 2.55,39 USA

Women

100m. 10,78 Shelly-Ann Fraser JAM, Torri Edwards USA
200m. 21,74 Veronica Campbell-Brown JAM
400m. 49,62 Christine Ohuruogu GBR
800m. 1.54,01 Pamela Jelimo KEN
1.500m. 3.56,59 Yelena Soboleva RUS
Mile. 4.18,23 Gelete Burka ETH
3.000m. 8.33,66 Vivian Cheruiyot KEN
5.000m. 14.11,15 WR Tirunesh Dibaba ETH
10.000m. 29.54,66 Tirunesh Dibaba ETH
Mar. 2.19.19 Irina Mikitenko GER
3.000mSC. 8.58,81 WR Gulnara Galkina RUS
100mH. 12,43 Lolo Jones USA
400mH. 52,64 Melaine Walker JAM
HJ. 2,06 Blanka Vlašic CRO
PV. 5,05 WR Yelena Isinbayeva RUS
LJ. 7,12 Naide Gomes POR
TJ. 15,39 Françoise Mbango CMR
SP. 20,98 Nadzeya Ostapchuk BLR
DT. 67,89 Iryna Yatchenko BLR
HT. 77,32 Aksana Menkova BLR
JT. 72,28 WR Barbora Špotáková CZE
Hep. 6733 Nataliya Dobrynska UKR
10KM W. 42.29 Tatyana Kalmykova RUS
20KM W. 1.25.11 Olga Kaniskina RUS
4x100m. 42,24 JAM
4x400m. 3.18,54 USA

Hasay Earns Second Footlocker Title

2008-12-13T15:16:00.010+01:00

Mission San Luis Obispo (CA) senior Jordan Hasay, the national high school 1.500m record-holder and Olympic Trials finalist, won her second national cross country title today at Balboa Park in San Diego, charging past 2007 winner Ashley Brasnovan with 150m remaining to become only the sixth repeat winner in meet history.

“It was kind of crazy,” said Hasay, who entered the race as the first four-time West Regional champion, to the San Luis Obispo Telegram-Tribune.

“I didn’t know if I was going to win the race until the last 100 meters. When I crossed the line, I was just so happy.”

Brasovan, a senior from Wellington, Fla., moved ahead of pacesetter Allie McLaughlin with 300 metres left with Hasay also moving up. Then Hasay made her move on the final downhill, which she noted isn’t usually her strongpoint.

“Before the downhill, I thought I was going to get third,” said Hasay, who improved from third place last year (17:31). “I was OK with that. But I’m never going to give up. I’m really competitive. So I kept going.”

"I ran my hardest, and I am still happy with my race. Jordan is an amazing runner, and it was just an honor to race her," Brasovan said to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

Hasay, who finished third in a Brasnovan victory last season, finished her senior cross country season undefeated.

McLaughlin, the Colorado State 5A state champion, finished fifth (17:34).

"I took it out hard," McLaughlin said to the Denver Post. "If I didn't win, I wasn't going to be happy, but I was pretty excited. After the race I felt like I ran the way I wanted to . . . that's just how it is until I work on my finish."

Kathy Kroeger, the 2006 Footlocker national champion and runner-up at last year's edition, placed sixth today (17:42).

___________________

Foot Locker Cross Country National Championships
Scoring Teams and Points:

1. Midwest 49 (3 5 9 14 18 21 22)
2. Northeast 51 (7 8 11 12 13 16 17)
3. South 60 (2 4 6 23 25 27 28)
4. West 65 (1 10 15 19 20 24 26)

1 Jordan Hasay (12) (W) Arroyo Grande CA 17:22
2 Ashley Brasovan (12) (S) Wellington FL 17:25
3 Megan Goethals (11) (MW) Rochester MI 17:30
4 Chelsey Sveinsson (10) (S) Dallas TX 17:31
5 Allie McLaughlin (12) (MW) Colorado Springs CO 17:34
6 Kathy Kroeger (12) (S) Franklin TN 17:42
7 Shelby Greany (12) (NE) Suffern NY 17:45
8 Chelsea Ley (11) (NE) Clarksboro NJ 17:49
9 Lindsay Flanagan (12) (MW) Roselle IL 17:50
10 Jessica Tonn (11) (W) Paradise Valley AZ 17:53
11 Emily Lipari (11) (NE) Greenvale NY 17:53
12 Aisling Cuffe (10) (NE) Cornwall On Hudson NY 18:03
13 Emily Jones (12) (NE) Harvard MA 18:11
14 Chelsea Oswald (12) (MW) Medina OH 18:11
15 Danielle Menlove (9) (W) Sandy UT 18:14
16 Laura Vigilante (11) (NE) Brookside NJ 18:14
17 Melanie Thompson (12) (NE) High Bridge NJ 18:18
18 Ashlie Decker (11) (MW) Des Moines IA 18:19
19 Alex Dunne (12) (W) San Clemente CA 18:22
20 Taylor Wallace (12) (W) Klamath Falls OR 18:24
21 Becca Addison (12) (MW) Spring Lake MI 18:24
22 Jordan Tomecek (11) (MW) Milan MI 18:25
23 Lauren Smith (12) (S) Lake Jackson TX 18:27
24 Megan Morgan (11) (W) Del Mar CA 18:30
25 Amanda Russell (11) (S) Cedar Park FL 18:30
26 Jessica Zangmeister (12) (MW) Fairview Park OH 18:30
27 Katie Kellner (12) (NE) West Windsor NJ 18:34
28 Shalaya Kipp (12) (W) Salt Lake City UT 18:37
29 Emily Sisson (11) (MW) Chesterfield MO 18:37
30 Jacque Taylor (11) (W) Petaluma CA 18:38
31 Kirsten Kasper (12) (NE) North Andover MA 18:40
32 Kayla Hale (12) (S) Indialantic FL 18:45
33 Jennifer Lynn Bergman (12) (W) San Jose CA 18:47
34 Sheree Juliann Shea (12) (W) San Diego CA 18:53
35 Adrianne Soo (12) (S) Chapel Hill NC 18:53
36 Diane Robison (11) (MW) Chesterfield MO 18:54
37 Ashley Isham (11) (S) Cedar Park TX 19:00
38 Megan Marsico (11) (S) Salem VA 19:06
39 Kimberly Spano (12) (S) Huntersville NC 19:07
40 Erin Cawley (12) (NE) Newark Valley NY 19:08

Senior Solomon Haile, who won the Northeast Regional title by 12 seconds, defeated Alaskan Trevor Dunbar by seven seconds to win comfortably.

Dunbar finished third at the West Regional last Saturday at Mt. Sac College.

Boys Scoring Teams and Points:

1. Midwest 32 (4 5 6 7 10 13 15)
2. West 51 (2 8 11 14 16 22 23)
3. South 71 (3 12 17 19 20 21 26)
4. Northeast 77 (1 9 18 24 25 27 28)

1 Solomon Haile (12) (NE) Silver Spring MD 15:15
2 Trevor Dunbar (12) (W) Kodiak AK 15:22
3 Thomas Porter (12) (S) Fredericksburg VA 15:26
4 Drew Shields (12) (MW) Fishers IN 15:27
5 Jakub Zivec (12) (MW) Grand Rapids MN 15:29
6 Evan Appel (12) (MW) Littleton CO 15:36
7 Futsum Zeinasellassie (9) (MW) Indianapolis IN 15:40
8 Chris Schwartz (12) (W) Bakersfield CA 15:41
9 Joe Whelan (12) (NE) Hamburg NY 15:44
10 Joseph DeMoor (12) (MW) Buena Vista CO 15:44
11 Brian Shrader (11) (W) Flagstaff AZ 15:45
12 Leoule Degfae (12) (S) Alexandria VA 15:46
13 Danny Pawola (12) (MW) Naperville IL 15:46
14 Shane Moskowitz (11) (W) Bremerton WA 15:47
15 Dylan Sorensen (12) (MW) Zionsville IN 15:48
16 Zachary Torres (12) (W) La Crescenta CA 15:48
17 Andrew Berberick (12) (MW) Littleton CO 15:54
18 CJ Brown (12) (S) Southlake TX 15:54
19 Michael Moverman (12) (NE) North Easton MA 15:54
20 Kyle Satterwhite (12) (S) Charlottesville VA 15:55
21 Matt Sonnenfeldt (12) (S) Knoxville TN 15:56
22 Bill Matthews (12) (S) Birmingham AL 15:56
23 Steve Sulkin (12) (MW) Elmhurst IL 15:58
24 Steve Magnuson (11) (W) Oro Valley AZ 15:59
25 Cody Helbling (11) (W) Coeur d'Alene ID 16:00
26 James Cameron (12) (W) Rancho Santa Margarita CA 16:00
27 George Galasso (12) (NE) Holmdel NJ 16:01
28 Andrew Springer (12) (NE) Westerly RI 16:01
29 Clint McKelvey (11) (S) Maryville TN 16:04
30 Philip Wood (12) (NE) Yardley PA 16:04
31 Ben Furcht (12) (NE) Haverford PA 16:07
32 Phil Galebach (12) (NE) Medford MA 16:11
33 Chase Rathke (12) (S) Katy TX 16:17
34 Tyler Udland (11) (NE) Short Hills NJ 16:18
35 Joseph Manilafasha (12) (MW) Denver CO 16:19
36 Evan Hibbs (12) (S) Georgetown TX 16:25
37 Wyatt Landrum (12) (W) Oakley CA 16:27
38 Karreem Tyre Johnson (12) (W) Gonzales CA 16:44
39 Alex Ott (12) (S) Weyers Cave VA 17:30
40 Brett Johnson (12) (NE) Ocean City NJ 18:41

Final Verdict on Marion Jones: Vol. 63

2008-12-08T12:31:00.007+01:00

Written by Eric.

This is the 63rd and final submission in a long series about Marion Jones, a former elite sprinter who won (stole) honour and earned (stole) endorsements, fame and fortune by method of fraud.

This story, now in its final segment, is being told in its entirety, because Marion Jones is unable to do it herself inasmuch as she is more complicit in the BALCO affairs and her own drug-taking than she has led on.

As this series on Marion Jones now draws to a conclusion, one important question continues to arise throughout, namely: Can people prone to dishonesty in certain circumstances ever, under any non-compulsory situation, simply tell the truth?

Marion Jones, following years of nagging, begging, pleading and admonishing you to do just the opposite, wants you to believe anything is possible.

Fortunately, we are not here to solve that mystery of when, if and under which of circumstances they’d be more apt to act accordingly.

However, I’m basing much of my argument over the fact that, yes, indeed, mendacious people can and will do so sans reward, but will also even do so when the very real threat of direct punishment and punitive damages looms overhead.

Your job as peer adjudicators of this case is to first presume that Marion Jones has a clean slate and has never tested positive for any drugs. You owe it to her to reserve judgment until all of the facts in the matter of this case are collected and digested individually despite what my prejudices in the matter are.

You have a fantastic opportunity afforded to you to think critically through logic and reasoning to determine if there is enough convincing evidence to remove every reasonable doubt you could have as to assertions that Marion Jones has deceived, conned, tricked and lied about her involvement with performance-enhancing drugs – from the on-set of her career through to her final brush with danger in the form of a positive EPO test turned negative. If you have a single reasonable doubt about the veracity of her claims, you will be obligated as honorary deliberators to vote “not guilty.”

However steep your path rises in interpreting the truth of what Marion Jones states, nevertheless, the course upon which you will embark will involve an individual detailed mental self-examination of your feelings, thoughts, and motives as they relate to this case compared to the evidences provided on both sides – suggestions of exoneration and those which point to undeniable guilt. Those self-awareness activities have an integral relevance and impact on your belief system and judgment capabilities, and are, therefore elective courses of action for which you will be required to take in order to fairly and accurately play your role in this case for which you have been called.

Marion Jones wanted you to count partial evidences and statements of facts which actually omit fact to determine that, based on those “near truths,” you would be able to make good use of those assets and advantages to help her obtain success in this case. Triumph for Marion Jones and her camp, ladies and gentlemen, would have been a permanent, binding and final judgment on her character leading to no less than a “not guilty” verdict on the whole of her actions and associations, and no deviation from journalists, fans and any investigative agency down paths looking into the sum of the parts making up her character, reputation and achievements. Had she have been exonerated, that is, she would have wanted a cease-and-desist order placed on speculation – present or past.

She was granted no such reprieve, however, and was cast further into the spotlight.

It is because of her past that you sit here looking at her present situation, however, and are being asked by peers prosecuting this case in the public’s court to declare that Marion Jones, the former world an Olympic 100m champion, ineligible from all competitions as a professional athlete and to have her marks, times, places, honours and achievements stricken from historical accounts achieved by clean athletes – or those who have failed, themselves, to have thus far been caught. She has had a block of her history removed – a period between 2000 and 2006, but that accounts only for the time Marion Jones was willing to provide U.S. Federal authorities concerning her drugs-taking.

You, having demonstrated tremendous patience in sifting through the many thousands of words written to establish a case against Marion Jones, will also be requested to indebt Marion Jones to the sport in a manner and fashion appropriate and just for hoodwinking general fans who’d never imagined the degree of deception spun in the inner circles. Forcing Marion Jones to finally speak on her own behalf truths and more truths – and nothing but truth, so help her God – whom she relies on to take care of her financial needs and future, will remove doubt as to how clean waters in Marion Jones’s life turned into mud, why she willingly crossed into deserts wrought with danger, and how she grew wings in 13 weeks to rise past competition which was unmistakably superior in form and experience.

Though details about Marion Jones’s life will present you with factual information on her personal acquisitions and obligations, you are not here to judge the life and times of Marion Jones the free-spender and payment-skipper.

However, in concert with that spending, nonetheless, you will be asked to have her explain in reverse order the sequence of events from her alleged phone call to her attorney back to her testing day at USATF in order to factually capture those events as they occurred – leaving no stone unturned.

You have been told the “truth” as it was presented through Marion Jones and her counsel. You will and shall ask for Marion Jones to verify the truth in reverse chronological order without hesitation to establish if, indeed, the facts fall into place much as she did when preparation of those facts was made.

The significance of this exercise, ladies and gentlemen, is to utilise a manner of truth extrapolation which enforcers of the law who are chosen to investigate claims made under oath to speak the truth operate to better determine veracity of facts provided them. It has been proven effective, and, as Marion Jones has shown a propensity to utilise methods enforced by law officials to verify truths, it should so be carried out.

Establishing truth in that matter will uncover compelling evidence which demonstrates that Marion Jones did have – and used – motive, means and opportunity available to sweep a positive drug test under the rug, and, in so doing, to mask that deception by participating in – or allowing – leaking of those details to cover up her misdeeds.

Those misdeeds, recall, are a long period of performance-enhancing drug use which had previously been called to light, but had never been captured as such until the 18^th day of August, 2006.

Inasmuch as untruthful people are also able to have integrity and speak forthrightly on occasion – and sometimes do reach out in peculiar ways as to reveal a misstated fact or omission of accuracy, one can and should trust that those who have previously testified about Marion Jones are persons fully able to reason and act with consequence to the benefit of truthfulness.

That is a fact which you must carefully consider, as said testimony provided on previous occasion in courts of arbitration have condemned – not exonerated – athletes who have made certain claims about themselves. Having been declared guilty based on the information they provided about they, themselves, you shall also carefully consider their testimonies when associating a factor of truth relevant to what they have stated about Marion Jones.

When they have had means and opportunity to make condemning remarks which would have imminently linked Marion Jones to their legal, binding testimony whilst facing their own perilous futures in arbitration courts, each witness has remained conspicuously silent on any and all matters thereof.

The chief provider of information concerning Marion Jones was outspoken on several occasions and faced a lawsuit initiated by Marion Jones’s attorneys on her behalf in an attempt to vigorously explore the possibility of his having defamed her by his statements made on television and through an internet media source. It is due to this previous drugs provider that several athletes were found guilty – both through analytical and non-analytical evidence – of using substances deemed inappropriate and illegal.

Marion Jones escaped a collision with truth and evidence when, having been issued a grant to avoid testifying in his case by means of a plea bargain, the defendant refused to help authorities solve mysteries known solely to the defendant, himself; the cornerstone of evidence available was stowed away and locked.

You now have the terrific responsibility of ascertaining if those statements he made about Marion Jones were authentic and carried with them any significant measure of weight to tie her to wrongdoing.

You will also provide Marion Jones, herself, an opportunity to be as determined to demonstrate the same amount of resolve to be as open about life as she was about concealing her athletics death – with no possibility of an afterlife. This may prove to be a tall order, nonetheless, as prompting Marion Jones to show any true remorse – not a shower of tears – in the matter can be akin to attempting to draw water from a desert weed, as in this instance:

“My life does not revolve around having to prove to anyone that I am drug free. I am probably one of the most tested athletes in the world. I have never tested positive for a steroid. The people that know me ... know I would never do anything illegal. I would never take any performance-enhancing drug. I'm not going to degrade myself to prove I'm drug free. I know I am.”[1]

Instead, she degraded herself by changing out of her street clothes into her prison-issued Khaki clothes.

Pause for a moment, if you will, and consider this: It couldn’t be more shocking or more “degrading” for an athlete unprepared for the drugs-testing procedures to submit to those tests the first time they are required to do so. They are followed, watched and observed as they relieve urine into a bottle whilst a person of the same gender watches to ensure no substances are introduced to the specimen and ensure that the specimen content being delivered is that of the selected athlete.

One athlete, Brit Jason Gardener, the four-time European indoor 60m champion who announced his retirement in the early summer of 2007, lamented the idea of anti-doping officers’ participation in the testing process, stating:

“And I won't miss someone calling at my house and accompanying me to the toilet, standing less than a metre away and watching me provide a urine sample. I always thought that was an invasion of a human right.”[2]

Having submitted to these tests more than 100 times, there is nothing degrading for Marion Jones as a professional athlete submitting to a process performed by a professional in collecting such samples.

She was, consequently, required whilst an active, non-retired athlete to submit to random testing procedures as agreed upon by her athletics federation, the International Olympic Committee and the world athletics governing body, IAAF.

More than that, she will be banned from the sport for taking illegal drugs.

Had she been further involved in the sport without the drugs confession, she would have been subjected to random and selected testing time and again to prove that she was not taking a drug – the same as every other athlete who is tested is obligated to substantiate.

If Marion Jones had not found the process of frequently leaving random physical specimens degrading, how would the thought of one being requested by an ascertaining body have been considered to be humiliating to establish the same facts?

The results would have proven devastating.

Alas, lest we forget, Marion Jones had a flare for being dramatic to the point of anything which called into question her moral code and values, though it be a combination of choices and associations she had previously made and been a part of which do just that, namely question her claims of being drugs-free.

You now having the means, motive and opportunity to deliberate and reach a verdict on both Marion Jones’s believability and her credibility prior to her confession and testimony. As you take thoughtful, methodical steps to consider the evidences accordingly, I would like you to consider the old biblical parable of the farmer planting his seeds, since Marion Jones is leaving it up to God to sort out her future:

The farmer, whose livelihood depends on skilful seed scattering and crop growing, toils long and hard to spread seed across four lots of property. Some of that seed falls on a path, but pigeons and other birds come and eat it; his first attempt at bringing food to his table will prove unsuccessful as that seed has no chance to spring up and bear fruit.

Having left his future to fate and nature, some of the farmer’s scattered seed will unfortunately be strewn across stony places – which, having no depth to the soil and no cover from the sun, will be parched by the sun’s harsh overhead heat and dies.

Having hope that scattering seeds would grow a crop which would yield food and draw cash for subsistence – but not having any control over where the seed ultimately landed, the farmer would regrettably discover that some seeds consequently tumbled into un-ploughed areas which were unprepared for harvesting with the existing vegetation crowding out the plants and causing them not to grow.

However, given his experience as a farmer – whose life and pursuit of basic needs is reliant on his ability to farm – he knows some seed will fall where he wants it to go, namely to the fertile soil – where they will grow, produce a lively crop and put food on his table until the next season.

Let’s make this practical to your experience here as members of this public discussion.

You, dear friends, are meant to be a representation of the various types of soils, and the seed is reserved to be the message you have been provided to impart knowledge to reason, reason to understanding, understanding to action, action to closure.

The seeds – or impartations of knowledge – in the first three instances in the parable represented information provided to jury members who were given direction but lacked hearing and understanding – people who had made certain determinations in their minds prior to allowing evidences to come into play – being partial rather than impartial in their judgments. They also represented persons who were unable to translate those words of testimony into practical application, and were unable to receive those instructions with all readiness.

Those seeds, as you know, bore no fruit for the farmer.

Now I, believing that you are rational people who, having withstood the duration of this dialogue, are keenly aware of the previous issues at hand sans Marion Jones’s confession – unlike those who would rather have had you hardened to the sum of the truths spoken and softened to the half-truths delivered to conform to a point, also have a willingness to listen and a desire to learn how the facts in this case stacked up against what Marion Jones had stated and what those who had spoken out against her had issued as far as decrees. I don’t believe you would have been allowing yourselves to be susceptible to deceptive speak-talk from Marion Jones nor from me as your guide through this maze of influence.

Consequently, nevertheless, I implore you – having been equipped to carry out such a vital task – to take with great responsibility the burden of toiling in your fields in order to allow fruit to be borne. Take action as you conclude deliberating within yourselves to turn over the soil as it were, and allow new seeds in the sport to grow in place of the withered weeds which, if they were to have continued to root deeper into the garden of athletics life, would have choked and rotted life out of all else in its field.

You face a challenge of uprooting – digging out – the choking, wild vegetation which resembled Marion Jones in the sport, and removing with it all records of note; all recorded times and distances; all marks and placing; all medals won outside of the statute of limitations; and all remnants which remain of Marion Jones planted into the sport as a wild weed by way of abuse of performance-enhancing substances. The issue that presents itself is what amount of punishment is sufficient, but not greater than necessary, to impose a just sentence in Marion Jones’s case. Reaching your agreed-upon conclusion may cause inconvenience insofar as you may hold an unpopular viewpoint, though in light of her confession (and apparent lack of sincerity), you may have more support than you had counted on.

It is the power which you have – of a public with a singular opinion – which can ensure life, liberty and the pursuit of athletics achievement can be done with passion for the sport and respect for those who also wilfully partake in such endeavours in a manner and fashion which is both legal and ethical, and holds the sport in a good light.

Marion Jones is not such a person who has any respect for the sport, though she wanted you to have believed otherwise, as demonstrated pursuant to her Millrose short-sprint victory, which followed a 14-month absence for child-birth and rearing.

“That buzz, the feeling was so overwhelming,” Jones said. “I looked around the arena and said, ‘This is where I belong - among people who love this sport.’”. [3]

People truly in love with the purity of the sport don’t want Marion Jones, however. Perhaps they are in the minority – at least according to an ESPN report in 2007:

But do you see any kind of mass revolt by fans demanding a cleanup? Anyone boycotting the ballpark? Not according to attendance figures pretty much across the landscape of major sports.

We're too emotionally invested to pull out. We love the great performances too much. We want to believe in the 70-homer season, the 40-year-old Olympic swimmer, the world-record sprinter. Sometimes, we want to believe it too much.

Maybe that willingness to suspend disbelief is why athletes always plead their innocence despite evidence to the contrary. They figure we'll buy anything. [4]

Marion Jones-Thompson, a married woman, has moved on with life and, following her penal code issues – including prison and probation, will follow the pursuit of her goals outside of the track stadium. She will attempt to turn over her own new leaf with her husband, their infant child and her previous one from Tim Montgomery, but she will first reap in prison what she sowed far away in North Carolina.

This series hasn’t been about the movement of Marion Jones-Thompson, nor is it about the private steps she, as a non-athlete, has decided to take much the same as with the end of her previous existence – alone and secluded.

Marion Lois Jones the athlete, however, had a passion for winning, but did not have a respect for self, for others or for the sport which provided her a platform upon which to seize the opportunity to vigorously – yet legally – pursue those winning achievements against her desired goals. That Ms. Jones, ladies and gentlemen, did wilfully and deliberately make conscious choices to cheat the sport of athletics, of which the nature and circumstances of her offenses require a public-opinion sentence imposed that reflects the seriousness of her misconduct and promote respect for the law which governs her sport.

Based on the foregoing, I trust that you, the fans of this sport who have also stood by throughout the course of this manuscript, having been led to it by your unending support of the sport of athletics through continued engagement of activities and participation – having respect for the principles of fair competition and of the laws which govern the application of those principles – will agree that a term of lifetime exile from this sport’s esteemed places – with all of its rewards and adulation – will be sufficient but not greater than necessary to end the rain of deceit and cover-up of those actions by Marion Lois Jones, a former Olympic and World Champion who achieved these distinctions by method of fraud.

Gail Devers, the USA 100m hurdle record-holder, speaking on the Marion Jones topic following the self-confession, stated:

“My first thought was to say a prayer for her and her family and whatever she is going through. That's all we can do is pray. I am not the judge or jury,” Devers said. “All I ask is that she asks God for forgiveness and that her family and particularly her son will be shielded from any harm.”[5]

Paul Doyle, Asafa Powell’s agent, was less than forgiving on the matter, believing much harsher penalties should await Marion Jones.

“I think personally athletes should be going to jail if they knowingly cheat. It is fraud, and sport is a big business now, and if you commit fraud in business, you should go to jail. I think honestly the only way we can deter young, upcoming kids who think drugs is the only way to be successful is if we can get really harsh and have jail time.”[6]

I by no means am casting the first stone at Marion Jones, nor the second or the third... or any for that matter. I realise completely that none of us is perfect in word or deed. Moreover, despite what injustice one may perceive that Marion Jones has committed against them, her athletics governing body, the international body governing them and the anti-doping folks really are virtually the only ones who own the right to take aim at her athletics career.

And, they have chopped hard against the grain of cheating which had been Marion Jones’s career.

My personal wish has been for enough people to gather small pebbles and create a cloud of dust, to provide Marion Jones the point to take a long hike back into the wilderness and simply disappear into the night away from the sport in any capacity forever. Her records from 2000-September-1 onward – including 24 of her sub-11 second 100m performances – have been annulled, providing a great doorway for her to move on through.

Then again, in being prejudiced on this topic, I am not one for much wishful thinking. Somehow, Marion Jones will never simply go away.

That is good news for the IAAF, which hopes to bank on the account of improprieties Marion Jones has stashed now that she has been released from prison.

“There is a lot of sadness for Marion and her family.

“Six months in prison is a lot, but you do hope that it will be a deterrent to others.

“Hopefully when she is out of prison she can help the IAAF and other organisations to ensure that other people don't follow the path that she certainly followed.

“It (her doping) has certainly hurt the image of the sport.”[7]

Lauryn Williams, whose agent spoke vehemently about Marion Jones as quoted earlier in the book, hopes Marion Jones also can contribute something positive back to the sport. Perhaps Marion Jones can find it in her calloused heart to give graciously and freely of herself in order to provide positive change and direction for the many thousands of children, teens and even young adults who were waiting on her every race with great anticipation.

Said Williams on her WCSN.com blog:

“Why I believe her situation is unfortunate is because she has created a life outside of track and field. And that life consists of two children and a new husband. Her children, will have a period in their life w/o a mother due to the decisions she’s made in the past and/or the people she chose to associate herself with. That is unfair to them.

So now maybe u can understand ‘unfortunate’ because now her past has caught up to her present and will effect not only her future but her children’s future.”

I asked this question before I met her in 2004. What did she contribute to our sport so far? I saw plenty of commercials and interviews but I have never heard about anyone saying that Marion contributed anything to the sport off the track.

It is 2007, and I still wonder what other than run fast did she do to improve the sport for everyone??

I think Marion owes us something. She should make an effort to redeem the sport. She shouldn’t go hide now in shame. She should speak to children about how not to make the same mistake. She should discuss with USADA what they can do better, and at meets make herself available to answer questions to fans of the sport. She should serve on a panel at the USATF national convention this December where we can ask her whatever we want about how this happened and explain to her how we feel. Also there should also be a tell all that explains the whole story and how it unfolded. Many people don’t condone writing a book that tells a story of conspiracy, fraud and other negative behavior by an author.”[8]

I hope and trust that you tend to agree, and will shun away any such attempts from Marion Jones should she ever decide to tell all just for the money.

Everything she has done from 1997 onward with respect to track and field has been about the money. It would be wiser counsel to have her simply escape into yonder to raise her two children and attempt to be a good wife... now that her prison sentence has concluded.

Then, and only then, can she follow her dreams and wishes to tell her children the story about the life and times of a woman who twice lied and wasn’t home to put them to sleep.

“My passion in life has always been my family,” Jones said.

“I know the day is quickly approaching when my boys ask me about these current events. I intend to be honest and forthright ... and guide them into not making the same mistakes.”

“As everyone can imagine, I'm very disappointed.

“But as I stood in front of all of you for years in victory, I stand in front of you today. I stand for what is right.

“I respect the judge's order, and I truly hope that people will learn from my mistakes.”[9]

Those were truly costly mistakes, and, unfortunately ones to which she still has not completely erased by virtue of withholding important information from the beginning stage of her career.

And of Victor Conte, whose connections to Marion Jones have been both for better and for worse?

“I feel very sad for Marion and her family. Marion did make some very poor choices and she does deserve serious consequences.

“There is no doubt in my mind that she has learned gigantic lessons.

“Hopefully, she will be able to serve as an example to others and help them to make good decisions.”

“I certainly don't condone her repeated lies, but I do feel especially bad for Marion's mother and her two children.

“Marion was one of the most celebrated athletes in Olympic history and her mistakes have caused her to be stripped of everything she worked so very hard to achieve.”[10]

Marion Jones-Thompson will have time to change her course and add back to society whilst performing a number of community-service hours – 800 to be exact – 400 for each of the two years of probation she will be on now following her incarceration’s completion date. Judge Karas, who spared her a fine due to her stated lack of money, recommended that Marion Jones-Thompson work with the USOC and USATF to educate children and school-age athletes about the importance of competing without cheating.

According to Karas, Marion Jones’s involvement with children would “take advantage of Ms. Jones-Thompson’s eloquence, strength and her ability to work with kids,” and would teach children that “it’s wrong to cheat and to lie about the cheating.”[11]

Six months of confinement in the detention centre should have provided Marion Jones-Thompson some reading time and many an hour to contemplate her future steps in life. They should have also provided her time to read about the Federal government laying into Graham and associates in his Federal trial – one which she was on standby as a witness.

If she has learned her lesson in this case – one which ends with her forced to spend time away from two sons – one of whom is still nursing, she will tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help her God. If she has decided to take criminal advice from inmates whose own strokes of luck didn't help – rather hurt – their short- and medium-term free movements and ability to choose when they want to arise and go to bed, she'll land in an even bigger mess with harsher consequence and an upgraded prison facility with higher walls and an extra set of razor-wired fence the next time a trial of any significance comes her direction.

The choice is now Marion Jones-Thompson's to make. She, wanting to be a catalyst to help others, must start off by being truthful to herself. Once she has her inner-demons figured out - those which bring out the sociopathic tendencies in her - she can seek advice to begin changing her ways. She's been in prison - a place where lies, lies and more lies have gotten a majority of the women in there, and where lies, lies and more lies rule the inner walls where it is challenging to trust your neighbor in the two-floor dormitory setting which houses the 1.000 women there.

If she has made good use of her time in helping others help themselves, Marion Jones-Thompson may find that honesty really is the best policy to ensure she has a decent shot at a good future and can be a respectable member of society who works for a living and pulls her own weight legally, lawfully and respectfully.

Carswell Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas would have allowed Marion Jones-Thompson to use her college degree within the prison walls had she spent any considerable time at the prison. Though a communication specialist, she could have been granted an opportunity through the prison system to tutor and mentor women who are working toward earning their GED certificates; her short, six-month stay will keep her on simpler duties, however.

Notwithstanding, she will have witnessed no greater truth than observing the varying levels of education women in the facility will possess as she interacted with them – from describing a chore to asking to have the salt passed across the chow table. There is little wiggle room for a person behind on math or without a good grasp of the English language to fake their way to a passing score.

The women with whom she interacted – each with a specific inmate number and offense committed against the government, just like Marion Jones – were on her level, not beneath it. To some she will have wished to have been invisible. To others, she may have befriended on cordial terms – especially the three women with whom she will share a living quarters; room inspections occur five times weekly as well as a unit inspection. Marion Jones was responsible for her room. Teamwork – something Marion Jones has previously taken for granted for her own gain – will have come in handy at Carswell Federal Medical Center, as inmates in her unit are likely to co-operate on duties to get the work done quicker.

The important lesson she will have needed to learn on the prison premises is that lying – misstating the truth – can – and often does – have disastrous consequences, as rules behind the walls are often harsher than rules on the outside – even if those walls are erected around minimum-security facility.

Marion Jones-Thompson had an opportunity to make a difference to these women in food-service job (dish detail or a cooking duty), and by doing so, to start making a difference to herself. It can provide an excellent platform for her – an individual who needed time away from being in the centre of attention with a captive audience.

Her alternative was to work on the compound landscaping, scrubbing washroom walls, showers and toilets depending on what availability the prison, listed on the Federal bureau of prisons, as being approximately 10 inmates short of capacity, has available.

Her postal codes changed significantly over the past year, as she occupied space in a building located at Carswell Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas – a facility located more than 100 miles from her home, and, subsequently in the half-way house where she spent her final two weeks before being released. Perhaps moving from her castle to shantytown to the slums – where writings on the walls tell stories of worry, frustration and a longing to be free will lbe the liberation Marion Jones needed.

Then again, as time has shown on more than one occasion, it may only turn her resolve to maintain her inner strength ever the more powerful resulting in hardness and another facade under which to live, hide and escape when the pressures mount. She appeared on Oprah in late October to be the same person she was prior to entering the penal system: a calculating liar.

She had two months to prepare herself for entry into the penal system and her boot camp. She's had six additional months to figure out what to do with the rest of her life as well as the two years and 800 hours to commit to a plan to give back to the sport from which she robbed.

Until such time that her Department of Corrections obligations are satisfied, she can practice playing the children's game “Truth or Dare?” with her eldest son and see how many times she can pick the former, rather than the latter. She has more than her tattered and permanently damaged reputation on the line.

And so it was, and shall always be, important to tell the truth one word at a time in order to avoid daring anyone else to sue, to judge or to throw away they key for any period of time, however great or small.

Sources:

[1] San Francisco Chronicle, “Marion Jones isn’t running ... steroid controversy”, 2004-05-14 [2] The Evening Standard, “Gardener Dig At the Cheats as He Hangs Up Spikes,” 2007-08-03 [3] New York Daily News, “Marion Jones back on track at the Millrose Games,” 2004-02-09
[4] ESPN.com, “Forde: We love ’em and can’t leave ‘em”, 2007-08-09
[5] LA Daily News, “Track star Marion Jones admits lying about use of banned drugs,” 2007-10-06
[6] International Herald Tribune, “Marion Jones makes right decision, but truth comes too late”, 2007-10-09
[7] The Guardian, “Officials hope Jones sentence will be deterrent”, 2008-01-11
[8] WCSN.com – Lauryn Williams Blog Entry, “Thoughts on Jones”, 2007-10-09
[9] Sportinglife.com, “Jones Hopes Prison Sentence Is A Lesson To All,” 2008-01-11
[10] BBC Sport, “Jones punishment is fair – Lewis”, 2008-01-11
[11] MSNBC, “Marion Jones sentenced to 6 months in prison,” 2008-01-11

Turning the Page on Marion Jones: Vol. 62

2008-12-07T19:03:00.008+01:00

Written by Eric.

This is the 62nd submission in a long series about Marion Jones, a former elite sprinter who won (stole) honour and earned (stole) endorsements, fame and fortune by method of fraud.

This story, now in its final chapters, is being told in its entirety, because Marion Jones is unable to do it herself inasmuch as she is more complicit in the BALCO affairs and her own drug-taking than she has led on.

Marion Jones was a desperate woman in desperate want, a person who was absolutely in need a new life in 2006, and having convinced herself it was time to end her spiel, she was absolutely in need of a total makeover in 2007. That would appear to be one reason she remarried and moved from North Carolina to Texas where the crowds are fewer, the personal history not as deep, and the future brighter in the absence of having to see physical reminders of all that once was, and objects of possession which would never again be.

Marion Jones collected eight international championship, cup or Olympic victories and added a dominating 14 national championships to her legacy whilst competing in the sport of track and field as a professional athlete. However, when she packed her NIKE gear away in her bag – a question even arises as to whether it was even ever unpacked – and departed the five-floor, nine-suite hotel she was booked at in Zürich in August 2006, did she know that all she would have left to show of the lot was nothing more than a few dusty trophies and a collection of articles of an athlete once thought to have been the savior of her sport?

What she did know was that her medals collected between 1999 and 2001 would certainly be recalled and snatched from her bragging shelf. She also knew the pain and anguish it would cause her former teammates who shared on 4x100m and 4x400m teams in which she participated in either of those championships – or both.

Her estimated bank account balance at that time would demonstrate that the sum of her bills would have added up to more than the memories can compensate for them, and the plane ride would be her last on someone else’s dollar.

Running away from Zürich, and, likely the sport, doesn’t guarantee her any ability to completely be able to run away from life, as it were, insofar as each and every time she looks at her son, he will continue to remind her of his father and of times she and he shared – both good, bad and in-between, and times surrounded by controversy, allegations, banishments and branding as a cheater. Using a hyphenated name under the union of marriage rather than assuming a completely new identity will be another.

But Marion Jones-Thompson really is two different persons: She’s Marion Jones, who aggressively and illegally pursued times, places, marks and medals and vigilantly challenged all that stood in between – including Victor Conte, and she’s Marion Thompson, wife to a man who has quietly gone about living his life in Austin, Texas and was selected unexpectedly for the 2007 Pan-American Games.

Uniquely determined, she was Marion Jones whilst the first married man in her life, Cottrell J. Hunter III, kept his own name – and own problems – to himself. She remained Marion Jones when her next significant other, Tim Montgomery, would fall into the BALCO trap and ultimately fall out of grace from the sport, and from the record-books. And, she was Marion Jones, the last woman standing (or was that sitting?) after an EPO scare was followed by an interview in September 2006 which had her completely shocked that she’d been wrapped up in another drugs story niggling at her heels again, but a story which was rebuffed and stomped out when a scientific method proved that she didn’t take drugs then…or ever.

What remained to be seen up to her sentencing was which name she would use when sentenced for crimes against the United States of America, the country she stated she betrayed by obstructing justice and lying to Federal authorities.

She chose Marion Jones Thompson.

Due to the former, the latter self - despite its introduction into the public domain as a criminal - is not left to exist in the future under the sun without the clouds of the past creeping up and raining on her celebration of a new life, new goals, a new scenery and, quite likely, a new career.

Perhaps Marion Jones-Thompson’s hasn’t been consigned a firm-footed and grounded place in life, rather a juggling act she’d have to manage the rest of her natural life. She juggled interests as a two-sport athlete in high school and university with starkly different physical responsibilities; she managed to co-exist between principles of right and wrong as a professional athlete; and she managed to get rich at the genesis of her professional athletics pursuits and end up “broke” when the book of revelation was opened in the form of a 180-page declaration of facts to authorities – powers of influence with whom she has had a lot of dealings in her career professionally as an athlete, privately as one who has breached a financial contract, and personally with respect to economic support for her child.

Continuing as one person united to power and greed whilst life circumstances attempted to split her into another was been an act Marion Jones had been attempting to perfect for some time up to – and including – her incarceration.

Following her latest tie to calamity, it would seem conceivably best for her to give up the past and press onward in a full sprint ahead to a life outside of the lanes – rather than one confined by them. But Marion Jones needed the structured boundaries in her life as she did on the track, with violations of stepping outside for any given time immediate and irrevocable; her entire sports life has been governed by guns and whistles, officials and fouls.

There is hope that a new existence in a state far away will ease some of the troubled life that has been Marion Jones’s own reality – one which she created and lived under whilst the world hadn’t a clue of how elusive and deceptive it was, rather believed it to be rather distant, yet on par with lives lived by other famous athletes.

Had Marion Jones (Thompson) not been ensnared in the Graham trial, she would still be too old to legally run as she once did in her early 20s – when she was able to illegally withstand a high demand of competitive races per season and compete through multiple rounds requiring strenuous activity.

Additionally, her value as an asset to European meet organizers would have been severely handicapped due to a number of factors – most of which surround the image she portrayed. The 2007 season did not produce ground-breaking and earth-shattering marks in Marion Jones-Thompson’s absence, but having broken away from the sport for a second term in the latter stages of her adult life would not have been advantageous to fast running and high placing.

Having had time on her hands – those minutes, hours and days which comprised the 24 weeks she would exist whilst in prison, Marion Jones-Thompson appears to have one simple choice remaining at this juncture in her life: Marion Jones must give up memory of the life which took her to stadiums in such places as Maebashi, Birmingham, Monaco, Stockholm, Sydney and Bruxelles – which had along with it provided personal excitement generated when thousands once cheered her on inside the arenas and queued outside the hotels she was booked at for autographs and move forward. It benefits her nothing to live predominantly in the past in a sport which she cheated – through BALCO – to make her name, earn her income and collect her valuables.

Retirement from this sport would have been inevitable to Marion Jones, as her body, having twisted, turned, raced and run thousands of times the world round from California to South Africa, and from Mexico to Greece, grows stale, became less flexible and, ultimately, didn’t provide the same spark and drive found in the fountain of youth. Certain athletes – like American middle distance runner Jim Sorensen – still have the steam left in their engines to give chase to records – both personal and those accessible to the world in their categories, but they are a rarity and seem driven by being unable to leave the daily grind of training behind.

Perhaps moving to Austin, Texas, is a great break for Marion Jones-Thompson, as she is addicted to results, and Austin is addicted to the outdoors and sport – sharing more than 200 city parks, nearly 75 miles of maintained hike-and-bike trails, thousands of acres of nature preserves and 2.3 million acre-feet of water surrounding Austin according to the Austin Sports Commission; the city is positioned on the Colorado River, with three lakes within the city limits. She should appreciate the freedom following a lockdown behind prison walls.

Austin can provide Marion Jones-Thompson, a parolee and criminal record-holder, a new leaf to turn over and can blow an allowable breeze behind her into a future as an average citizen – her reported income-level defaults her into that given category. Whether she takes stock in that opportunity and moves on forward is completely up to her own initiative, drive and determination – three characteristics for success which she does not lack insofar as motivation is concerned. As she moves forward into life with her new husband, she can learn much about what regular people who work hard and have good moral values – upright citizens – do as a community, and herself become part of that community.

Marion Jones-Thompson, who seemingly has put all of her trust in God in her darkest hour, perhaps can hook and reel in people waiting to hear a “terrible” story about shame and guilt, robbery and deception – and turn that opportunity around into gaining support as a person now forgiven and whose faith and values have been restored. Perhaps, leaving her financial destination to God, as she stated, she can serve her community as an ambassador to youth gone wild and gain community support as she delivers messages to wayward teenagers who, themselves, are travelling down a road of becoming slaves to the consequences of their own bad choices.

I hadn’t the slightest idea what Marion Jones-Thompson would do had she reached the stage where she, sans any standard threat of exposure as a cheat, would have been requested to look both left and right and be asked to make a directional choice accordingly. She has, however, already crossed that path, having moved on along following the sale of her last home – leaving only remnants remaining of a life in North Carolina which, to the onlooker who would have peered in at her estate from the dirt road leading down to the murky green water some seconds away, appears to be held together in a broken vase full of shattered hopes and bad dreams.

I, too, stand at a cross-road in this chapter of life, as I’ve dedicated the greater part of a year following a trail which seemed to not have a direct origin, and has ended with a woman taking the liberty granted her by the government of the United States of America – handed down in the state of New York to pursue life and happiness to whatever degree, to what end and to what length she feels can be applicable given the criminal circumstances of her life.

Now that I am compelled to go forth into my next mission – as this one is nearing its maturation, do I believe that Marion Jones owes me any explanations regarding the events which have engulfed her and beleaguered her past?

No. She attempted to provide them to Oprah.

Had Marion Jones provided them, I’d likely be cynical in trusting their validity and authenticity – having a tendency to believe, instead, that her remarks were another well-crafted assist from her counsel weary that their client, who’s been considerably apt to stray away from due north, would say or do something which could be held against her in a court of law. I was, consequently, one who smirked for all the wrong reasons when Marion Jones was at the wishing well and asked – pleaded – for a scientific test to cover all transgressions. Cautious pessimism is the best I could afford any non-specific Marion Jones testimony and explanation she may ever feel compelled to bring about.

I’ve been asked to imagine what it's like for Marion Jones to be charged with a doping violation and to envision what it likely felt like for her to have been caught up in guilt by association – implicated, if you will, for offences that she didn't commit. I’m reminded that she had to appear before a Grand Jury and swore on oath she should not be accused of committing a crime as she was drugs-free; she told the courts that she was not guilty.

I am instructed that my duty is to assess the credibility of each and every witness who can speak positively and negatively of her actions and character, and told to determine the facts from the evidence. I’m advised, however, that I should ignore anyone who could likely have a beef with Marion Jones, as those people who were to speak out on record under oath were either liars who should face jail time or were compelled to speak against their wills. I’m informed that Marion Jones is not on public trial in a kangaroo court for violations of a moral code, but it is that same standard of morality – honesty – with which her attorneys want me to find character witnesses impeachable.

Dick Pound tells those who would believe that a “kangaroo court” existed to think again.

“I have also questioned the wisdom of the strategy adopted by
her entourage of accusing the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency of being a “kangaroo court” when every piece of evidence points to the contrary.”[1]

I’m told to ignore all logic and stick with the facts, namely that Marion Jones had never failed a drugs test, and, despite her associations with men who would later become criminal, I should never consider the company which she kept as being any indication of the strength of her character – this despite the fact that the law would give me the right to draw reasonable inferences from the evidences brought up whilst investigating those persons.

Then, when the weight of guilt vs. innocence was at its breaking point – when scattered evidences became very real in the form of a positive test for EPO, I’m told that a great injustice was done to Marion Jones when her result was leaked to the world rather than allowing due process to run its rightful course.

I’m told that Marion Jones became shocked at the news of testing positive – that she was overwhelmed with emotion when it was revealed to her that a chain of custody number corresponding to her name displayed a result of drug usage the top laboratory in the United States – and arguably the world – had determined through borderline interpretation that the result was positive. So shocked, I was told, that one morning in Zürich Marion Jones called someone who cared enough about what had happened to do something about her predicament. That someone was her attorney, who, in his turn, hired an expert to refute the evidence initially discovered and turned “The Day That Track Died” into a legal means for his client to continue her pursuit of economic sustainability.

His client refused, citing loss of form, but was thankful the test taken proved once-and-for-all that she had never taken a drug, period.

That, for me, specifically, ladies and gentlemen, is what suctioned up the collective strewn pieces of half-truths Marion Jones had earlier used to litter the ground she walked on and had them cast out into a pit.

Notwithstanding, Marion Jones has come clean – or at least as close to her version of it as possible given her nature and propensity to embellish and misconstrue truth. She is a self-convicted drugs cheat and money-laundering accomplice.

My advice – as a calloused person whose involvement in this, like you, is in a search for truth – to you is that you tie the knot on any trash bags you, too, may have and drive them far, far away from you to a special place set aside where other dirty, clunky and sealed bags full of polluted things Marion Jones has stated end up on a heap pile.

In spite of this potential prejudice – an opinion I carry which had every possibility of contaminating you as honorary jury members had you been unable to draw your own conclusions without reasonable doubt, take every opportunity afforded you to draw deductions based on each and every one of the facts as they have been presented to you through Marion Jones’s recorded athletics history, times, marks and places compared to her peers, especially when she was out of each of the sport’s echelons – upper, middle or lower – in the 100m and 200m before undertaking an improbable and implausible rise which do not show characteristics for such early success in the absence of means and opportunity; Marion Jones’s own words, denials, admissions and excuses, along with those defensive words used by her attorneys; draw your conclusive points through the testimonies of athletes who’d cheated but turned the other cheek; moreover, follow the reasoning set out by those who have pursued truth and evidence and based their legal decisions thereupon; make informed choices based on county files which are deemed to have been recorded as being true and accurate, and which can be construed as demonstrating a cover up when the events are taken in chronological order; and, finally, panel, judge the facts as you see them based on accuracies to stories told by and for Marion Jones – up to, and including, any which may reveal how one drugs test was categorically and retrospectively able to clear Marion Jones of any potential wrongdoing.

[1]Washington Post, “WADA Chairman States His Case”, 2004-08-23

Turning the Page on Marion Jones: Vol. 61

2008-12-07T09:48:00.003+01:00

Written by Eric.

This is the 61st submission in a long series about Marion Jones, a former elite sprinter who won (stole) honour and earned (stole) endorsements, fame and fortune by method of fraud.

This story is being told in its entirety, because Marion Jones is unable to do it herself inasmuch as she is more complicit in the BALCO affairs and her own drug-taking than she has led on.

This entry asks if all that Marion Jones set out to accomplish by method of deception was worth the weight of gold.

Marion Lois Jones was once the fastest kid around town.

Folks who have followed her career since the wee days when she was a precocious 14-year-old remember her spiking one foot into the surface of tracks near them and following with another until her momentum churned and she sped to finish lines ahead of her competition – if it is, indeed, fair to call high school girls running half a second slower than she was “competitors”; there were a lot of other girls like her friend Samantha (Clark) Hollister who ran in the same races as Marion Jones and have memories of lining up on the track at the same time in the same race, and have scrapbooks filled with results which prove that they did run against Marion Jones.

The year before she entered high school, she won eight medals at the USA Youth Championships.

Marion Jones likely also has a lot of scrapbooks filled with memories from her days and weeks and years spent between two California High Schools, Rio Mesa High School and Thousand Oaks.

One needn’t be reminded that Marion Jones did demonstrate herself to be an exceptional talent which, when turned into a running machine, would be dangerous and a strong world-record holding candidate – the fastest-ever to sprint from null to 100m in 11-odd seconds with a legal wind captured during those fleeting seconds from the gun to the tape. As a prep senior, she had accomplished more in terms of records and titles than had any of her predecessors. Marion Jones was a woman looking up at the top of the world, and would have had only a few mountains to climb to reach the skyline had she focused on athletics instead of allowing her sport to play second-fiddle to basketball at North Carolina.

Marion Jones was a stellar high school basketball star, but it was not her better of the two sports she played. She had conquered every foe beginning with her 10^th-grade track season, and never lost a high school race the three remaining years of her prep career. Her team did lose a few basketball games, and that lack of completion – perfection – may have spurned her interest to compete in the sport in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Marion Jones never relished perfection at North Carolina, but the teamwork employed by five starting individuals and a support cast of substitutions allowed her to taste ultimate success in basketball, and she was once able to take home the coveted NCAA trophy which only one team per season is able to do in a sport which eliminates competitors until two remain – both eager, hardened, tough and exceptionally skillful eyeing the same prize, important national respect and an opportunity to stand on top of the centre podium when the big show concluded following five rounds and a final match.

Marion Jones the track and field star took a long ride in the back seat following her high school days, and, ultimately, in 1997, she, just having graduated from university and green to a newer world than she’d last seen before her re-birth to the sport, was lured by the idea of consciously perfecting herself as an individual again and gaining the fame and positive public scrutiny of wagered when one of her caliber is able to win every race, achieve excellent performances and put together relatively insurmountable win-streaks – all whilst completely under the spotlight of a crowd and class of people completely supportive of her return to a sport where she was, at one time, indeed missed.

She had an opportunity that season – or at any time following her decision to turn professional – to surround herself with people of good character who had something of value to share of themselves with her. Having done so may have altered her entire course of modern history as she knows it – leaving her to enjoy her accomplishments and leave a positive which would continue to have a significant effect on the sport long after she would have departed.

Instead, Marion Jones made several critical mistakes along life’s decision-making path – the genesis of which was taking the easy road to stardom with Trevor Graham’s assistance. She wound along and spiraled further down a slippery slope with Victor Conte and, ultimately, had a reluctant willingness to pass “go” on Charlie Francis – three associations which, when viewed in crystal-clear hindsight, would not put Marion Jones closer to learning good values and leaving a positive legacy, rather be engagements which would link her to one of the most intricately and secretive ploys to scam and deceive this sport has ever witnessed.

Marion Jones’s first coach is connected to a long list of rumours of crimes and her agent has been connected to a crime also committed by both the father of Marion Jones’s son and by her latest coach. Sandwiched in between there at some point nearer the rise than the fall was a criminal conviction her “nutritionist” was handed out – a connection which brought drug allegations from Marion Jones’s first husband, who, in his own right, was conclusively a drugs cheat.

In all, Marion Jones either didn’t know or wasn’t told that shady deals were occurring right under her nose, as she became shocked to have stood by the side of two men who lived under her roof and used drugs, and one who slipped them into her training scheme whilst she hadn’t the slightest idea – or so she said.

Marion Jones won three gold medals in Sydney, Australia, and appeared to have had more weight in stature, fame, glory, marketability, demand and prosperity than any other athlete at those Games; she appeared to capture with her triumphs and attempts at making history a key ingredient which could transcend national borders and make her a cornerstone upon which the sport of athletics could justifiable seek its ambassador, one which the world could easily embrace, and a person upon whom sponsors could pin their sales pitches and ride the wave of popularity Marion Jones had created personally and professionally.

As you know, those medals were captured – stolen – by method of cheating, and the cornerstone which once was Marion Jones had become the greatest fraud in the sport’s history.

How much weight did Marion Jones bear in her three successful attempts to taste gold, touch it – run her fingers along the patterns imprinted on those circular-shaped medallions handed out to those who were declared “victors” on the medal stand?

Did she feel a weight of emotional gratitude for support in front of thousands in the stadium and millions watching simultaneously around the world as language barriers were broken amongst strangers who stood side-by-side holding consecutive-ticket numbers high-fiving one another whilst their girlfriends and wives had tears swell up as they were taken back in the moments as she accomplished her missions? When executives in private suites and open corporate boxes loosened their ties and took a break from numbers crunching and making the world turn round watched as Marion Jones ran around the world in their $700-million stadium?

Heck no is the prevailing attitude stemming from Sydney following her “confession” – at least according to Australia's senior International Olympic Committee member Kevan Gosper.

“I have no sympathy for her,” Gosper said. "I think she's a cheat, like any other cheat.

“I think the tragedy is for the sport, and it is disappointing that it will cast some shadow over the Sydney Games.”[1]

Was the sum of all gold medals – those prizes she was able to win at the cost of the valued and esteemed virtues she gave up in the form of honesty and integrity – worth the reward and its weight when innuendo turned into speculation; speculation into accusations; accusations into denials; denials into further assertions; lawsuits stemming from those actions; loss of form, loss of liberty to pursue income and opportunity; loss of desire to continue; and loss of freedom to remain selectively secret resulting from the combination of all of the above?

Was her reward just and applicable when reputation and character were challenged and world-wide support began to become subdued? When prized possessions became yard-sale material, and house and home was taken from under her feet in an embarrassing fashion? When very private affairs of financial nature became public knowledge? When strength of character figuratively changed from being a Vogue-featured woman-on-the-rise to tabloid trash located in paperback form at a convenience store near you? When she ultimately had to stand before a court of law and discover that her story, as good as she may have told it, would not save her from spending time in prison?

Marion Jones likely doesn’t collect newspaper articles written about her these days – no matter how much one can assume negative press can be turned into something positive. It seems highly unlikely any reconciliatory spin could be put on going from riches to rags and seeing it printed hundreds of times in columns and syndications, plastered across most major newspapers in her home country, and reading about the same on the internet.

Then again, Marion Jones prefers the spotlight, and spending time alone in a prison cell can motivate one to read, reminisce and find temporary escape into much nicer, more fulfilling times; she may do just that, namely pick up old scrap papers and tell stories to other inmates about how she travelled the world; was involved in what could be considered an affair with a big man; was tricked by a bad coach; and was lonely without her kids. There’s an audience for such a story to be told.

An inability to reconcile his moral code prompted Chambers to resort to taking performance-enhancing drugs, yet he gained no title benefit to justify having done so. The fall-out was horrific, the punishment was justifiable, and he felt obligated to shield his mother from negative press accordingly.

Michael Johnson spoke about Chambers in a column in the Telegraph which can generally be applied to Marion Jones as well:

“I have been asked many times why an athlete would choose to use drugs. I always try my best to explain their stupidity by pointing out how people can get caught up in the money and the fame and not think about the risk involved. They also forget that they might not actually achieve what they believe they can, or what they have been promised they can, if they use drugs.”[2]

The weight of a promise – belief in a great expectation – can lead to exceptional triumphs in life given the right motivation, the proper support and the means and opportunity. Gold medals are often won by athletes facing dire straits and insurmountable odds stacked against them to have even made it to the final as a contestant against the best in the world – athletes with more money, more means and more opportunity, but not with more to win and gain for an entire tribe, an entire people or an entire nation.

Victor Conte operated business on a premise that the athletics world was not created equally, which resulted in his having cheated the purity and integrity of the sport, creating false expectations for his clients, and robbing purists of a standard of performances which had considerably raised their anticipation of what was humanly possible to achieve with the right training, motivation and opportunity. Conte provided promises of stardom, excellence and fame (“a level playing field” as he’d call it) to certain clientele – many of whom were completely aware of the dangers wrought with forging a business partnership with him.

Conte’s pro-doping actions – no matter how meaningful or how easy to achieve – are under no circumstances justifiable to the least degree; he worked in ways which were contemptible, vile and loathsome. He wronged athletes, professional sports, fans who follow those sports and, equally as importantly, himself and his family of privacy and normalcy when he had previously been beleaguered by scandals, small claims lawsuits, personal problems and family issues relating to divorce and custody battles.

Was the consequence of all he had accomplished – supplying substances to lure dope tests in order to provide athletes like Marion Jones, Chryste Gaines, Tim Montgomery, Dwain Chambers, Michelle Collins, Kelli White and more evadable opportunities to pursue their dreams at an advantage greater than the sum of the athlete who had never been inclined to cheat – worth the costs of suffering defeat, vehicle collection, wristwatch and sustainable and profitable business notwithstanding?

“I hurt a lot of people and caused a lot of harm and damage,” says Conte, founder of the supplement and drug laboratory connected to five people who have been convicted of crimes, including Greg Anderson, Bonds' personal trainer. “Serious mistakes were made, and I learned some valuable lessons in the process.

“A lot of people in this world have made mistakes, including me. Did I commit crimes? Yes. Did I do time? Yes. It took awhile for me to forgive myself, and I have.

“I can't understand all of the hate. At some point, I hope the world can forgive me. I should be entitled to a normal life.”[3]

Marion Jones requested of the world a similar forgiveness.

“I recognize that by saying I'm deeply sorry, it might not be enough and sufficient to address the pain and hurt that I've caused you. Therefore, I want to ask for your forgiveness for my actions, and I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.”[4]

Conte, in his past history with the media, has not demonstrated a character which has been susceptible to failure, nor has he granted the public free admission into the personal parts of his life. He has been defiant of order and defiant of the law, yet he has reached a point where his hands are raised above his head in surrender to the motion he created by one conscious choice to cheat. He states that the burden on his family has been too great to bear, but time will tell when the final chapters of his professional life are wound up.

Marion Jones had never before relented to the pressures she faced to bear a burden of falsity and duplicity prior to her confession provided to family and friends and spread across the internet. The nearest in proximity to folding under the weight of living between right and wrong on previous occasion was in having made an admission to The New York Times that the afflictions her family were facing had reached a maximum limit when her “B”-sample test was recorded and word was set forth declaring her innocence to charges of doping. Unfortunately, her admission retained no form of ownership to the root cause of those problems.

Marion Jones had prior to her conviction and sentencing portrayed a life which has not had a significant weight too great to bear or crosses too heavy to carry on her shoulders in relation to athletics. Her determination to succeed had its own soul and had helped her from an early age to deny fear and to push beyond comfort – to the point of appearing machine-like in manner and deed whilst on the track. Fear, to her, was like a pendulum which moved according to the laws of physics once it is set into motion. Once fear’s motion stops producing energy, it slows and lacks purpose. Marion Jones had not been a fearful woman on the track, and had taken risks in life which would greatly retard the common man’s willpower to try knowing the final, just and lasting rewards would be severe and leave a dubious legacy for his children to inherit.

Off the track, on the other hand, Marion Jones turned from a fearless defender of truth in the version she had to offer it to folding her cards, playing victim to life, and leaving it all up to fate to work out the future. May it be said that the matter of truth she attempted to endorse bore minimal to no weight of believability, and made it easier for her to transition from one extreme to another.

Marion Jones conceded that certain events in her life – a compilation of bills, an abundance of legal fees, and having adhered to high standards of living and the like – had become too much to maintain, and had, subsequently, become draining financially of her personal assets and energy.

Would it not have been possible for Marion Jones to have acknowledged that certain events in her athletics life had also caused her unwanted consequence by her own hand – a relation between result and cause similar to the personal one she faced? Or would that information, rudimentary at best, have been too much truth to reveal, though only on a level which is obvious to the untrained eye and passers-by who may never have followed her story? Recall, if you will, that Marion Jones did indicate that certain associations in her life had been associated with her name. Would it not have been prudent for the wise to have turned course and made a thoughtful admittance that those events did occur due to her personal actions?

Had the cost and price she paid for her lack of wisdom, which, if exercised correctly, would have not had her sprint down an athletics lane to infamy, been greater than the equal and just reward she had received for those efforts to deceive, lie, cheat, steal, deprive and prohibit others cheated out of qualifying places and championship medals from living dreams Marion Jones robbed unto herself?

What did it profit Marion Jones, when viewing her career retrospectively at the first instance – having undertaken a task to fly to the top of the athletics and personal wealth world through the aid and assistance of Trevor Graham and Victor Conte, who, in succession, would turn a machine forward in Marion Jones which could never find its own wilful ability to reach a pinnacle and stop on its own terms – to have had gained gold, silver and bronze, but to have lost respect and credibility – the soul of being included in society, and to have been stripped bare by the curse of plenty?

Had Marion Jones taken time to retrospectively profess that there did exist solid connections in her life between poor choice and dire consequence – both of the personal and professional category which accumulated actions affecting her well-being and position in athletics history – and endeavoured to be free from the entanglement to those through concerted efforts demonstrating a move away from bad choice, she could have much sooner conceded the fact that one simply is unable to continue running at will from one extreme to the other without the risk of being caught at some point in the middle.

However, Marion Jones did not do that in her personal life, and vacillated between the bounds of rich and poor. She exchanged cash for money in the financial affairs she undertook, and ultimately was snagged in a trap.

She didn’t follow that given path in her professional life, either.

When push came to shove in the athletics world, Marion Jones was a fierce competitor who would never permit herself to intentionally foul out of the game. She sprinted, planted and jumped, and landed as far as possible into the sandbox in which she played. When red flags were raised, she was the kind of person who would have used instant replays to demonstrate that steps on the line were not steps over the line, and, therefore, were no reason to foul her out. She was Marion Jones, she said, and had no will to be left behind.

Golfer Lee Trevino once stated that “in the game of life it's a good idea to have a few early losses, which relives you of the pressure of trying to maintain an undefeated season.”

Marion Jones, however, is a woman whose life has heretofore been surrounded by hunger, passion and a desire to achieve under the most extreme versions of pressure, and she has been an athlete who hated to lose...ever. Defeat has had no place in her life, and was the very source of her ambition to succeed.

When the burden of the consequences to her associations has been perceived to have burden Marion Jones, she has interchanged players in her game and continued onward. When the yoke she bore as a result of her personal actions grew too heavy, she simply strengthened her legs and marched onward. She had attempted to force herself to remain in the game despite how much it costs those who participate with her. The weights of anticipation and of the prize justifiably exceeded the cost to achieve those to Marion Jones, and people who followed her closely were simply treated as objects to use or overcome as she has made her way forward.

[1]The Australian, “Gosper offers no sympathy to Jones”, 2007-10-08
[2] The Telegraph, “Bad days for drug cheats like Dwain Chambers”, 2007-07-11
[3] USA Today, “After BALCO, Conte still in the supplement game”, 2007-07-08
[4] Chicago Tribune, “Marion Jones Admits Steroid Use”, 2007-10-06

Turning the Page on Marion Jones: Vol. 60

2008-12-05T10:12:00.007+01:00

Written by Eric.

This is the 60th submission in a long series about Marion Jones, a former elite sprinter who won (stole) honour and earned (stole) endorsements, fame and fortune by method of fraud.

This story is being told in its entirety, because Marion Jones is unable to do it herself. Though parts of this story may be historical in nature, they are of essense to the sum of the whole insofar as they tell a story of a woman who is more complicit in the BALCO affairs and her own drug-taking than she has led on.

This and the subsequent entries remaining help turn the page on all that she stood for in dirty word and deed.

When does the process of demonstrating undying support for athletes like Marion Jones who are caught in the headlights become unhealthy – with the faculties of reasoning giving way to non-concrete things like hope and faith not in the absence of concrete evidence to the contrary, but because one simply has no availability of doubt to lend to their heroines?

Are doped athletes and those who help them level the playing field, so-to-speak, to be considered on par with criminals? Is it punishment enough when their careers are destroyed and their reputations permanently tarnished?

I believe the answer to the first question is simple: When an athlete like Marion Jones achieves a mark in the absence of concrete evidence to support her having both the ability and the legal means to make that achievement, and in so doing, she defies all logic and definition of what is possible given the parameters in which she has to operate, she should come under scrutiny, though not necessarily suspicion.

If an athlete like Marion Jones compiles a record which continues to defy logic and belief, one should investigate sooner – rather than later – the reasons behind such a success for the sport’s sake, and for the sake of its faithful fans.

However, insofar as drug cheats appear to remain a step ahead of the testers – and paying heavily out-of-pocket to do so (however fleeting that time may be), one may simply never have the means or the opportunity to catch such an athlete in a jam.

Having undying support for a phenomenal athlete is one of the principles which makes for being a great fan – the arête of the sport; having a conscious ideal of perfection and backing up those who are able to seal together the harmonious development of their minds and bodies is what brings happiness to our souls when it relates to our enjoyment of competition.

Conversely, when that support continues pressing onward when, despite the warning signs along that path which are meant to grab hold, stun, stop and erupt a sense of reasoning to alert you of possible faults with your beloved athlete, the practice of following blindly will have its self-humiliating consequences. There will be no one there to say, “I told you so,” rather, the painful part will be watching the news and having to confess inside, “I should have known better”.

Marion Jones made a self-confession that she should have known better than to trust a man who supposedly told her never to reveal any of their nutritional supplement strategy, and faced humiliating consequences of being locked behind bars away from her son for a six-month stretch in Federal prison. Her actions hindered two investigations and prevented authorities to act on pertinent information relevant to two large criminal investigations. The Federal government actually stated “It is difficult to articulate how catastrophic” Marion Jones’ false testimony would have been to the government's check-fraud case had her lies gone undetected. [1]

In the case of Ellerman, the source behind the BALCO grand jury testimony leaks whose actions – according to Federal prosecutors – had hindered the on-going BALCO investigation, his legal counsel believes just punishment should end with the humiliation one faces when exposed.

“Given the punishment Mr. Ellerman has already endured, having lost two full professional careers and suffering widespread public ridicule in the media for his actions among other losses in his life, no further amount of deterrence for Mr. Ellerman is necessary.”[2]

They were not alone, as the Probation Officer, in addressing to the court the issue of punishment and deterrence, stated Ellerman was not in further need of deterrence having understood his crimes and not being a danger of re-offending.

“The question, when considering deterrence, is, ‘Whom does the Court want, or need, to deter?’ If one considers only Mr. Ellerman, it is clear that no further deterrence is needed. Ellerman committed his crimes over a five-month period, and after all was said and done, he had garnered four felony convictions, resigned from the California Bar, lost his job at the PRCA, and found himself facing a prison term.

Mr. Ellerman know he committed serious acts, is extremely contrite, and is not in danger of re-offending. Thus, for Mr. Ellerman, a very high price has already been paid. Mr. Ellerman was a lawyer, though, and he is not being sentenced in a vacuum.

The Court must consider deterrence in general and must sentence accordingly. It must not impose a sentence, though, that disregards the history and characteristics of Ellerman.”[3]

Given the public ridicule Marion Jones has had, should one simply let her bow out and take her disgrace personally and quietly out of the public spotlight, or should a more just punishment be imposed to match the degree of lies and fraud she has undertaken since her return to the sport?

Jan Fitschen, the surprise 2006 EAA European Championships 10,000m gold medalist from Germany, stated to Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on 2007-January-1 that court-proven doping offenders should be imprisoned if they are found guilty of using performance-enhancing drugs.

Fitschen, 29, argued that the current maximum two-year competition ban the IAAF imposes on first-time offenders isn't enough in order to fight the battle against those who cheat. Fitschen told the newspaper that he, himself, has never been tempted to use performance-enhancing drugs, because of his status in the sport.

However, he did concede that his living standard and lack of reliance on athletics to put food on the table may not be seen in the same light by athletes with a different financial background.

In most cases, I’d put my house and home on the premise that if you’re out to cheat, you’re out for life, and you should not only be punished for swindling sponsors and event managers out of prize money and athletes out of higher finishing places and journalists of true stories, but also justifiably punished by the fullest extent of the social law for lying under oath and promise of competing at your best for the conscious ideal of perfection – not perfecting the conscious.

Stephane Diagana, the 1997 IAAF World 400m hurdles champion and an IAAF and WADA athlete Commission member, spoke along the same lines in pointing out on the third day of the 2006 IAAF World Anti-Doping Symposium in Lausanne, Switzerland, that athletes caught using performance-enhancing drugs should have equal financial penalties levied against them and the option for the IAAF or fellow athletes to claim back money the disqualified athlete earned dishonestly. The IAAF agreed that any financial penalties on an athlete or their federation could be summarily used to fund the IAAF anti-doping programme or any other Anti-Doping organisation.

The Tour de France took drastic measures to compel all participants to sign an anti-doping charter which requested participants to swear an oath that they are not involved in doping and that, if they are found to be guilty of using performance-enhancing drugs, they will be duty-bound to pay a year's salary on top of the two-year ban sanctioned on them for such a transgression against their rules.

Penalising dirty athletes like is part of the solution, but more will need to be done to enable cheats like renegade coaches like Trevor Graham to face considerable consequence for the equal transgression of the law of the sport. Athletes have received two-year, four-year and life-time bans for their transgressions – depending on the nature and number of infractions. Conte, in a court of law, received a four-month light sentence and continued on with his life.

Consider, if you will, the Italian Anti-Doping stance, for example – one which criminalizes performance-enhancing drugs usage including imprisonment and the levying of hefty fines. Athletes found guilty of drugs offences can be sentenced between three months to three years in prison, and be fined between $3.073 and $61.483 according to attorney Mario Ferrari of the law firm of Hammonds Rossotto, which has advised the U.S. Olympic Committee.

Italy passed an Anti-Doping Act in 2000 which provides a range of criminal penalties for athletes found to have used medical, biological or chemical substances identified by the Italian Ministry of Health as performance-enhancing. Their ministry tracks banned substances by reviewing lists maintained by the IOC and WADA. A criminal investigation is launched by a prosecutor’s office when it is alerted to an athlete’s positive doping test. The prosecutor has extensive authorization to approve search warrants should their prosecutors believe that evidence of possible doping has occurred.

WADA has taken leaps and bounds to speak out and enable governments to have the authority in the fight against doping to take action against the illegal manufacture and supply of doping substances, facilitate doping controls, support education, fund research, and take other equally important measures. One area WADA could improve on would be in doping rehabilitation, as a transformed athlete could make a positive influence on athletes riding on the fence between the choice of doping and putting in the extra hard work to make it to their goals as unassisted.

The IAAF Council, taking a positive stand against performance-enhancing drug usage, has called for an increase in doping sanctions to four years. They have undertaken necessary measures to ensure peer-to-peer anti-doping initiatives reach their intended audiences from elite athlete down to juniors who hope to emulate the seniors. The International Olympic Committee determined on 2007-August-23 to ban athletes from the next available Olympic Games should those athletes face a ban of more than six months; plea-bargaining with sufficient information to fight bigger sources of peddling and using would be the only possible saving grace from Olympic expulsion.

Wilson Kipketer, Denmark’s 800m world-record holder, is one such ambassador who has gone to length’s end to meet athletes from all over the world and discuss with them the meaning of adhering to an anti-doping initiative. He has aimed, particularly, to show juniors that athletes can become record-holders, Olympians and World Champions without doping.

Great Britain’s Daley Thompson, an eight-time gold medal decathlete, serves as a mentor with UK Athletics. He has been resolute in his stance against athletes who cheat, and offered the following advice following Gatlin’s positive test and his acknowledgement of the accuracy of the positive test:

“I wish all his marks were expunged and it was as if he had never competed.

“Any reference to him being Olympic champion should go, he should lose his medals and be banned for life.”

Furthermore, Thompson stated that Gatlin’s two-faced public image was a very bad blow to the sport.

“Gatlin should be made an example of. He has been going around saying what a great bloke he is and how kids can look up to him and that makes it twice as bad.

“What I have to do is advise them that temptation may be on offer during their careers but that ultimately, as Gatlin has discovered, cheats don't prosper.”[4]

Paula Radcliffe, the world-record holder in the marathon, was equally infuriated over Gatlin’s positive test, stating that he was a nice, honest person who inspired kids to take up the sport of athletics. His crime, she stated, was simple – it was fraud. She expressed dismay at the deterrents in America, however, in an interview printed 2006-09-10 in thisislondon.co.uk.

“Gatlin hasn't shown that he possesses a strong, moral ethic to do the right thing before, so why will he now?" she said. "He owed it to track and field not to cheat in the first place.”[5]

Radcliffe was much harder on Marion Jones following her 2007 conviction of lying to US Federal authorities and obstructing justice.

“I believe sanctions should be increased to four years (suspension) and in a case like this a lifetime ban should be imposed.

“We should be pleased. One of the biggest frauds has been caught. Her medals should also be taken away.”[6]

Marion Jones, the extraordinary high school athlete who disappeared off the map only to reappear better, faster and more mature with the absence of any real, valid and understood training time – and previously coached by Graham – also owed it to her sport to not cheat in the first place.

Why did she do it?

The underlying reason: Pure, unadulterated greed.

Why did she lie about it? According to her, it was to protect family, her coach at the time (Graham), and her career.

Make no mistake about Marion Jones’s complicit involvement in her ingestion of performance-enhancing drugs, and resist strongly the temptation to believe that she was lured by her coach.

Marion Jones, the competitive person she demonstrated countless times that she was, dared after considering the consequences to put one foot down the hot pathway to deception. She didn’t get burned initially, and thereby allowed herself to continue down a thought process which called for winning at a high-risk game she had begun playing.

She extended another foot out and put it down following the uneasiness and nervousness accompanying one’s first attempt at deception – or high-stakes lying, if you will. Consequently, she didn’t experience the same result that time, however; she was able to be more deceptive and had the unplanned luxury of being able to hide her performance behind an over-allowable wind reading; she again didn’t experience any jeopardy of exposure to a highly risky endeavour.

Learning very quickly that the pathway to success she had chosen could be managed despite the potential risk, Marion Jones set forth with first-degree intent to cheat to catch up…and go on….straight to the top. She then took leaps and bounds forward into self-delusion whilst also deliberately involving the rest of the sporting world in a game of cat and mouse.

Marion Jones’s misdeeds in the sport were spurred on by a desire to seek power, advantage, money and admiration – and all in as quick a fashion as possible considering she had 13 weeks to prepare for the springboard to that goal, namely the United States Outdoor Championships.

Putting together three seasons of mind-boggling efforts and results made her even hungrier for success. Winning five gold medals at a single Olympics would have provided Marion Jones an element of elite status unknown to any track and field athlete who had ever stepped foot into an Olympic stadium – eclipsing the four gold medals Jesse Owens won in 1936 and which Carl Lewis emulated 48 years later in Los Angeles.

Marion Jones would have had marketability which could have rivalled another person bearing the same initials, namely Michael Jordan, and could have used that power and influence to significantly forge ahead of other athletes who had legitimately endeavoured to stake claim to fame through hard work and legal means. Possessing power and advantage to call the shots would have also enabled Marion Jones to collect stupendously high sums of appearance fees as being the only athlete in the history of the sport to have won five gold medals in a single Olympic Games. Sponsorship opportunities would undoubtedly been at an all-time high for Marion Jones as she would have been the world’s most marketable person.

Having power, means to use it, opportunity and money left one more need to be met for Marion Jones: exposure and admiration. She had a fashionable personality which media accepted, and portrayed herself as a classy person who didn’t want to waste a minute more away from the track following her basketball career. Folks were to buy into an idea that Marion Jones was still the same gifted athlete she was in high school, and her regard and popularity, which both grew immensely across the globe as she set sail on her professional career, was the feather in her cap which she was to proudly bear; she did what she felt it would take to be accepted into the elite circles and appreciated by fans who love the sport.

Why did Marion Jones continue once she was established? She became used to “the lifestyle”. Lying became part of that lifestyle and culture of cheating by any undetectable means necessary to stay at the top. Moreover, at what point could Marion Jones have stepped aside and ever told the truth? She had an opportunity to retire following the birth of her child with Tim Montgomery. She had global and Olympic titles under her belt as well as a surplus of US titles, awards and accolades to boot; nothing was lacking from her trophy case except world records.

However, she chose to return to the sport and employ similar tactics as she had before – one hot step at a time. She continued with conduct which involved the improper use of power, the improper collection of trust and an inappropriate authority inherent in her position held as an elite athlete of this sport – though she struggled to maintain these.

The fear of that consequence also fed the fire of the lie, so she continued on until her “A”-sample result physically tied her to trespassing on the premises of truth – only to be released without charges some weeks later.

Fourteen months after that event, Marion Jones was released back to the world on her own recognisance, only to be charged for having fuelled those lies.

Marion Jones held no method to control others’ reactions to her untruths, and therefore didn’t feel at liberty to attempt to persuade anyone of the truth, Federal authorities notwithstanding. Trying to manage what she perceived could be potential reactions to discovery of those untruths only resulted in more lying and resistance from her, because the lesser physical connection she had to folks pursuing the truth the lesser personal connection she had. Consequently, she would be more likely to have revealed the fact that she was engaged in deceptive behaviour the closer physically she was to people, which is one reason I believe it is rationally imperative to keep yourself from believing she had no knowledge of what her ex-husband and former boyfriend were not on performance-enhancing drugs.

Nevertheless, had Marion Jones provided people an opportunity to learn the truth behind her success, the result could have been significantly different in gathering public support, understanding and earlier resolution inasmuch as the ivory posts overseeing the four corners of her world are not occupied with people casting down judgment. The content and tone of this book may have also been dynamically different than it currently is as well, and the substitution process between idolising Marion Jones and the next great athlete could have been much easier for children who look up to such persons.

Marion Jones played a game with her career, and assumed she was adept enough to never be caught red-handed in the spotlight. Insofar as she has undergone a metamorphosis of title and character from world’s fastest woman to world’s dirtiest, most sophisticated and greediest cheat and liar, she has no further place in the world of athletics. Not now, not ever. No amount of come to Jesus and be saved contrition or tearful confession on international television can erase the indelible red ink Marion Jones has used to stain this sport.

One simply can’t – and should never – believe utterances Marion Jones makes now – or has ever made – about having a love for the sport in which she has competed for so many years; love – undying love – in this sport requires a pure and uncompromised legacy be left when the spikes are removed from the sponsor shoes, and the final whispers have turned silent deep into the night.

Her having broken a Deed of Trust is another factor in limiting the degree of her trustworthiness.

Or should one limit his beliefs regarding her credibility and trustworthiness? Can liars ever tell the truth? You, I and everyone with a capacity to reason has at one time or another lied, cheated or fibbed in a manner inappropriate for being absolute truth-tellers or spreaders of truthful messages.

True life-living, life-long liars, however – when their backs are broken from the weight of shame and guilt they have carried, and their spirits are crushed from the defeat handed out when they, having lied, attempt to compete against the soundness of truth – appear as though they can, indeed, have their moments when, under the surface of the lying exterior, they can, as people, show signs of modest truth-telling capabilities.

Michael Johnson spoke the honest-to-god’s truth on Tuesday, 2006-September-19, stating in a Daily Telegraph column to his faithful British audience:

“For the sake of her own well-being, and the sake of the sport, it would be best if Jones just went away quietly to raise her son.”[7]

Could it really have been so easy for a stubborn, driven cat with an unyielding willpower to simply walk away into the night, take its paws off the roof long enough to finally let it cool down, and cuddle in a corner with a lonely old fart interested in telling stories?

Not for Marion Jones, who was forced into retirement by method of exposure to the lies she told.

Marion Jones hinted during a press conference in Belize in December, 2006 that she was considering retirement.

“I just need to make a lot of decisions,” she said. “My son is getting to an age where it is necessary for me to be present more and more. I'll make some decisions with my family in the next several months about what the future holds.”[8]

She was once very appreciative of Johnson, stating:

“To have somebody like Michael Johnson say something like that about you says a lot about my character, that I'm more than a track-and-field athlete.”[9]

Marion Jones owed it to herself, her competitors/rivals and her fans to have better moral character to do the right thing from the start, namely to use natural talent and hard work to propel herself to the upper echelons of the sport. Instead, history has demonstrated to us that she possessed ethical incompetence to the highest degree; the world’s fastest woman had the world’s slowest reaction time when it came to choosing a moral fibre consistent with the mark of a champion.

What effect did a person like Johnson likely have when Marion Jones was believed to have felt isolated, empty, robbed, deprived and shocked following her EPO test?

In all likelihood, it has had little consequential effect whatsoever, because I don’t believe she is capable of feeling anything when she has her game face on, her entourage defending her castle, and the remaining secrets of her past locked tightly in a vault.

The Fort Knox bullion depository is noted as being structured with a vault casing which has been constructed of steel plates, steel I-beams and steel cylinders laced with hoop bands and encased in concrete. There is not one person who is entrusted with the combination to the vault, as an elaborate scheme of numbers – combinations, if you will – are secretly and privately held by members of the depository staff who must successfully dial these separate combinations in order to open the vault.

In comparison, Marion Jones has had an influential inner circle of trusted advisors who possessed their own secret combinations available to turn the tide on her and unlock the truth in this, undoubtedly one of the sport’s darkest moments. Each held a private detail of accounts and activities which, when turned and unlocked in sequence, could have had an immediate and final impact on her career – yet have provided a positive march in the right direction for sports drug enforcement officials from the USOC, WADA and USADA.

Some of the keys to her improprieties were indeed inserted and dialled when discoveries and admissions netted information when the first-round of BALCO Grand Jury testimony began in 2003, yet Marion Jones bandied about and kept her game face firmly planted behind her deceptive appearance. Pressures mounted when part of the code began to crack, yet Marion Jones never vacillated and remained staunchly resolute in her attempt to keep focus and deliver on her promise of never testing positive. When it appeared that one person – not several as should have been protocol for protecting a vault of that magnitude – had the master codes tucked in his pocket and even began naming sequence times and codes to unlock the vault, Marion Jones simply stood in front of her treasure chest and refused entry despite the key fitting perfectly into the door; she broke off the keys in the entrance gate, so-to-speak, and left an entire army at the foot of her door.

Though the athletics world took a step back when the BALCO revelation came to light, it did not suffer a setback in finding new heroes for little children to worship, new rivalries to market around the globe and new demonstrations of speed and excellence to write home about.

Marion Jones, the once preferred-athlete who could pick and choose her own lanes in invitational races and decide when and against whom she wanted to compete, had been substituted for fresh faces – determined athletes and people who followed their dreams to excellence by taking paths which reflected their character and put to test their accountabilities to the sport.

The 2007 USA Outdoor Championships (USATF) held 20-24 June was only the second outdoor national title contest which Marion Jones had missed since her return to the sport 10 years earlier. Her absence was not missed by her competitors, as young, hungry and self-professed clean athletes stepped up to face the challenge and turn the page for the future – though there was even redemption for those who’d put in time and distance from previous personal and athletic misdemeanours.

Marion Jones may have had been “conspicuously absent” from the competition, but also remarkably absent in Indianapolis was the dark cloud hovering over the other competitors previously affected by all of the distractions; excellent plots and stories were able to unfold, and none of them involved the words BALCO or Marion Jones.

Tyson Gay accomplished an incredible double in the 100m and 200m dashes, running 9,84 and 19,62, and there was not a mention of Marion Jones in the headlines. Allyson Felix, the 2004 Olympic 200m runner-up, won her third USA title at that distance – effectively taking over the reins from Marion Jones as the world’s best in that event. No mention of her there, either. As a matter of fact, the sport seemed better off without her – fully capable of standing on its own two feet propelled by athletes who were ready to accept the task.

Consequently, both athletes went on to win six gold medals in Osaka between them, with Gay taking the 100m crown (9,85) from world-record holder Asafa Powell (third in 9,96), establishing a new meet record in the 200m (19,76), and running the third leg on the victorious 4x100m relay (37,78).

Gay had never won an IAAF World Championships medal in his career, having placed fourth in the 2005 IAAF World Championships in the 200m (20,34).

Felix won the 200m in her first-ever sub-22 second performance (21,81) and ran legs on the victorious 4x100m (41,98) and 4x400m relays (3.18,55) – the latter with a stunning third leg of 48,0 seconds. Felix became the second woman in the history of the IAAF World Championships to win three gold medals. East Germany’s Marita Koch won three at the first IAAF World Championships edition in 1983.

Marion Jones’s name didn’t crop up in Japan, either, except when 200m sprinter Susanthika Jayasinghe of Sri Lanka placed third for the second time in her career, 10 years after Marion Jones won gold in her first season of running professionally.

Allyson Felix stole the women’s show in Osaka, and it was of utter relief to watch her perform in her own spotlight in her own hour of victory absolutely free of the web of deceit under which Marion Jones did.

The United States collected 26 medals – 14 gold – and not one question ever arose about the what could have been had Marion Jones competed.

USATF released a statement following Marion Jones’s sentencing, and relayed much of the same sentiment:

“Today's sentencing concludes a sad series of events. The revelation that one of the sport's biggest stars took performance-enhancing drugs and repeatedly lied about it, in addition to being a party to fraud, has no silver lining. But, it is a vivid morality play that graphically illustrates the wages of cheating in any facet of life, on or off the track. We hope that all Americans will take to heart those lessons. The sport of track and field in the United States has moved on since Marion Jones competed, reaching even higher levels of success, as a team, than when she was at her peak. No one wanted to see this happen, and we hope that Marion and her family can move on as well.”[10]

Sources:

[1] San Francisco Chronicle, “Recommended term for Jones: up to 6 months”, 2007-12-22 [2] MSNBC, “Alcohol, drugs, depression root of BALCO leak”, 2007-06-06 [3] USA vs. Ellerman Supplemental Sentencing Memo, 2007-07-10 [4] BBC Sport, ”Gatlin medals must go – Thompson,” 2006-08-23 [5] Thisislondon.co.uk, “Radcliffe in revolt,” 2006-09-10 [6] Thisislondon.co.uk, “Radcliffe Pleased ‘Fraud’ Jones Was Caught,” 2007-10-06 [7] Daily Telegraph, “Taint of scandal has irreparably harmed Jones”, 2006-09-19 [8] Reuters, “Jones Considering Quitting”, 2006-12-15 [9] The New York Times, “Marion Jones Feels An Odd Emptiness”, 2000-10-02 [10] USATF.org, “USATF statement on the sentencing of Marion Jones”, 2008-01-11

Why You Shouldn't Believe Marion Jones: Vol. 59

2008-12-05T09:29:00.003+01:00

Written by Eric.

This is the 59th submission in a long series about Marion Jones, a former elite sprinter who won (stole) honour and earned (stole) endorsements, fame and fortune by method of fraud.

This story is being told in its entirety, because Marion Jones is unable to do it herself. Though parts of this story may be historical in nature, they are of essense to the sum of the whole insofar as they tell a story of a woman who is more complicit in the BALCO affairs and her own drug-taking than she has led on.

This and the subsequent entries remaining will not attempt to discredit Marion Jones, but rather to help turn the page on all that she stood for in dirty word and deed.

Sports Illustrated's Tim Layden, in picking his 2008 Athlete of the Year (Usain Bolt) this week, stated that track "deserves better than to live forever in the ghetto of suspicion and whimsy, marginalized to the level of the sporting flavor of the month. It deserves a rock-solid place among the most valued sports on the planet." He's right.

This sport has succeeded in overcoming crucial tests of fan reconciliation in the past, and it will succeed in this one as well – despite the Victor Conte’s of the world staring opportunity between the eyes, and salivating with the thought of accomplishing the impossible.

“People ask me, ‘Do you feel guilty about what you did? Are you ashamed?’ I don't mean any disrespect to judge Susan Illston, but the answer is no. I realized elite sport is about doing what you have to do to win. I've seen athletes being forced to decide whether to use or not use, and it's much more painful for them to give up the dream than to use anabolic steroids. That's what's really going on. That's the choice athletes face when they get to the very top.

“Why did I do it? Because I'm a competitive person. I can't hold my own on a track, court or playing field. But I've still competed year-round at the highest levels. It's been special to be in the trenches when one of my athletes won an Olympic gold or became the world's fastest human.

“Why am I telling you this now? Because I believe if you do things for the right reasons, the outcome will be positive. And I believe the world deserves to know the truth about the way things really work, painful as it may be to hear.”[1]

Conte has not been slow in discussing what he deems is the truth about the state of affairs as they appear visible from his vantage point. You’ve heard Conte state many “facts” as he witnessed them in the past, and have observed that Conte can be both blatant about “truths” as he can be as reserved about them. He’s spoken out, and he’s been wildly outspoken. When he talks, people continue to listen, which means that Victor Conte still has a captive audience to whom he can preach and minister his words of advice.

Whether or not Conte is perceived as a life-time liar who is incapable of telling the truth, he hits some very significant pegs squarely on the head without a slight effort when discussing details of doping which otherwise go untouched by those who participate in pursuing or are being pursued.

People – every day Jones – would ordinarily miss out on the opportunity to be informed that what he sees is not always what he comprehends.

“Do athletes use insulin? Yes, it’s undetectable,” Conte said. “Do athletes use thyroid medication? Yes they do, it’s undetectable. Do they use growth hormone? Yes, it’s undetectable. Do they use EPO [erythropoietin]? Yes they do, that test is extremely easy to beat.”

How could the doping police do a better job? Conte insists that he has answered these questions. He has had three meetings with the US AntiDoping Agency and in February 2005 he spent three hours with an official from Wada. “And I didn’t do it in exchange for leniency,” he said. “I did it for the right reasons: to create a fully cooperative acknowledgement of the massive drug problem in elite sport.”

For the doping authorities to be more successful, he recommends better target-testing. “When you see that the fastest two men in the world are both from a track club in Los Angeles, for instance, or the Bay Area, or North Carolina or Jamaica – this should be worth looking at. What you need to do is take the dollars you have and the number of tests you have and focus your resources on the top ten in each event. Why test the top 100 – the people who are not winning races and not winning dollars? Why test everybody two times when you could test the top ten-10 times?”

He also recommends better timing of the testing. “The testing used to drop off hugely in the fourth quarter of the year. But my point is, this is the off-season quarter when the athletes are using substances for their intensive weight training. Why did the testers decide to take a nap then?”[2]

Edwin Moses, the former four-time 400m hurdle world-record holder who had a 122-win streak in his event and a strong proponent of clean sport initiatives (he and several of his colleagues legislated and successfully adopted the USA out-of-competition drug-testing programme), spoke in direct response to Conte in a follow-up article in The Times (UK) – which was subsequently syndicated and expanded in the Los Angeles Times.

“The braggadocio of Victor Conte – head of the Balco laboratory in California, who has admitted distributing steroids and who is practising his magic arts upon the weak-minded again after being released from prison – as revealed in the pages of The Times last week, tipped the scales of my silence: it is now time for me, and for other clean, world-class athletes from every sport, to speak out loudly against the claim that doping is simply “the way it is” and the only way to the top.”

…

“The values of honest sportsmanship, a level playing field, clean competition and sheer passion for the game that Laureus represents are the values that must propel me and others like me to speak out against characters like Conte, his cronies, his clients – and the systems and stakeholders that enable their crooked work. If we fail to take a stand for sport as we love it and once practised it, our legacy will be mean indeed.”[3]

Steve Cram, the first man to ever run under 3.30 for 1.500m and the previous mile world-record holder, in responding to Chambers’ statement that the likelihood of clean athletes being able to win the Olympics, stated the following, which could easily be transferred to Conte as well:

“I wish he would just shut up about athletics. I believe there are people out there who can still perform to the very highest level and break world records without taking drugs.”[4]

Cram has been vocal about athletes polluting the sport in which he actively participated at the highest level in World and Olympic Games settings from 1978 – 1991, and has made it known in no uncertain terms that he wishes the injustices done to the sport to be made to a bare minimum by eradicating it of cheats.

Reducing to none the number of cheats at the highest levels is not an easy task. Consider the following scenario Conte paints of athletes who go about circumventing the testing methods:

“They fill up their own cell phones so that when the testers call it says. ‘Sorry, the mailbox is full, you can't leave a message.’ Then the testers call other numbers. By the time they show up the athletes are clear, and they test negative. What's the worst consequence? It's a missed test.”[5]

Boldon, who was dismayed by the high level of cheaters during what he called “The Balco Era”, first offered this about the state of the sport and Conte:

“We have some of the most talented humans on the planet competing in our sport – a few of whom try to cut corners. Don’t believe idiots like the already-convicted Victor Conte, who will open his mouth to say anything that will keep him in the news and erase the fact that he has very limited knowledge of what it takes to run fast – none of his clients in track were that impressive, even when juiced to the max.”[6]

Conte’s mix of illegal products had an effect on Tim Montgomery’s “Project World Record”, and Marion Jones improved by leaps and bounds in her early professional career, but one understands the point Boldon is attempting to make.

Boldon actually made an about-face in January 2008, stating that Conte could be one of track and field’s “most-influential” people of 2008 if he could be trusted to remain scrupulous to his duties.

Conte has responded to criticisms he has faced for his post-BALCO comments, stating to the USA Today:

“As much as people want me to climb under a rock and stay there,” Conte says, “I helped create a lot of positive change. I'm the one to push over the world's first domino and brought to the world's attention that change is needed. I believe I'm one of the most qualified people in the world to help create a genuine level playing field for the young athletes of the future.”[7]

Looking back whilst attempting to forge ahead, the sport of athletics can – and will with absolute certainly – succeed in its attempt to have the harmonious development of mind and body – sans drugs – to be the basis of an athlete’s success if it can convince chemists who have a burning passion and a hunger to better scientific methods exercise foresight into the effects of their actions.

Patrick Arnold, who, following his four-month prison term for his invention of THG, is one such person who has not heeded the call – having developed a specialty drug which is meant to block estrogen and increase testosterone production, an aromatase inhibitor. Aromatase inhibitors as a group are prohibited under USADA and WADA rules, as they are considered steroids.

“In assessing the various key players in the BALCO case, Mr. Arnold stands out as an anomaly. He was drawn into the conspiracy for reasons not driven by greed, promise of reward or even by misplaced loyalty or friendship, but by an intense -- albeit ultimately misguided -- scientific passion.”[8]

In terms of survival and reconciliation, moving forward and moving past, I have never had the narrow-minded derisive confidence that my words to you would not be doubted, nor have I had the overbearing self-assurance that you would go along with those word and beliefs on the assumption alone that Marion Jones is an immoral person who lies, cheats and has stolen from this time-honoured sport we cherish and adore. As I clearly stated in the beginning of this book, I am no expert on doping, on behaviours, on lies and cover-ups, nor am I a person trained on the skill of catching cheats.

One of the bases of this series is that, in the court of public opinion, Marion Jones and her attorneys believe that we should never have come to a point where she should have been put on trial before us. They will state that there is no physical evidence supporting the idea of the misconduct I am accusing her of had been committed, and cast doubt and suspicion on the testimony of witnesses I’ve relied upon whose own evidences has been greatly scrutinised and/or would raise objection from her counsel had those witnesses been called upon in a court of law to testify, and whose testimonies in public and in private – in the line of fire – have been “wildly” contradictory.

Despite all of this, do not be fooled, as Marion Jones has “confessed”. The merits of this series are not based on her confession, however, rather on what logic dictates one should reasonably infer.

They appear to concede to the world that there were circumstantial evidences which could have indicated that Marion Jones could have been viewed as being suspicious at times, but those suspicions not having enough weight to make her a suspect in any sense of the word, they’ll state before conceding victory to the little guy upon her confession. They have urged the world to consider the lack of previous evidences against their client demonstrating belief and persuasion beyond a reasonable doubt to be an assumption that there was doubt of the substance of evidences collected against her.

However, due to the diligence paid to locating, unearthing and revealing the truth – the whole truth in the entirety of its context, and the corroboration and help of those whose own lives have been ruined and whose reputations have been irreparably damaged as a result of their own deliberate acts to deceive along with the thorough, complete and intensive investigation made by the authorities, athletics can move forward on leap at a time – one increment over the next – sans Marion Jones until the wheels of the whole are turning in tandem with the desired goal of competing for the joy and prosperity afforded to clean athletes, not dirty ones.

Athletes like Dee Dee Trotter have taken it upon themselves to play clean and stay clean, having launched her own personal “Test Me, I’m Clean”, campaign.

“When they go down for something as dramatic as steroids, it's kind of like we're clumped into one bottle and it says all of them must do it because he was the best and he does it. Everyone probably does it. That was the bottom line for me. I said, I do not do drugs. Everyone will know that.”[9]

That dare has been made on a previous occasion by Marion Jones, which makes it nearly impossible for athletes who truly may be free of drugs to truly be trusted and believed.

Sources:

[1] ESPN The Magazine, “Last Laugh”, 2004-12-20
[2] Times Online, “Why doping is as easy as taking candy from a baby,” 2007-05-17
[3] Times Online, “Time to take a stand against the cheats and the spineless”, 2007-05-21
[4] The Scotsman, “Chambers should be banned for life, says Coe”, 2007-06-04
[5] CBC.ca, “Drug-free Olympics? Dream on”, 2008-05-14
[6] Caribbean Net News, “Track and field cheaters upset Trinidad’s Boldon”
[7] USA Today, “After BALCO, Conte still in the supplement game”, 2007-07-08
[8] San Francisco Chronicle, “BALCO steroid developer sentenced to prison term”, 2006-08-05
[9] Knoxville, TN WATE 6, “Dee Dee Trotter talks track goals, steroid free,” 2007-07-05