Marion Jones - Catch me if you can
Marion Jones has found out that no matter how fast you are, you cannot run away from the truth. In hardly a surprise for many people, USA Sprinter Marion Jones admitted yesterday that she was a drug cheat. She had taken the designer steroid THG, which was also known as “the clear” by the BALCO laboratory. She had vehemently denied any wrong doing for a long time, under mounting evidence. I don’t know how she had remained clear for so long. Even the head of Balco, Victor Conte, who has repeatedly and publicly accused Jones of using drugs, was her personal “nutritionist” at the Sydney Olympics. Now and rightly so her reputation is in tatters, and she is apparently broke. She will lose many of her records and the medals she won at the Sydney Olympic Games. I have no sympathy for her. It makes me angry that I have to give these athletes the benefit of the doubt, when all the anecdotal evidence and rumours paint a dirty picture, but unfortunately the drug tests have failed to find any evidence, and they deny all the allegations. It make me think of the saying that “When something is too good to be true, it probably is”. When I watched her sprint away from the rest of the field in the 2000 Sydney Olympics 100 metre sprint, my first thought was that in such a competitive event that someone cannot be that much better than the next best sprinter in the world. And now it is shown that no one was, naturally. Even the second placegetter has subsequently been done for drugs, and who knows which other athletes in that field also had artificial enhancement. As I have said before, it is hard to enjoy watching some sports when my first thought is always whether the winner had taken drugs to get there. This applies at the least to cycling, track and field, and weight lifting.
Related Pages: Doping in Sports, Track & Field, Marion Jones profile, 2000 Olympic Games
I planned a nice day today at the Australian Open, avoiding the forecasted very hot weather mid week. However, today the weather has gone too far the other way, and drizzling rain set in for the day. After some days where the heat policy was put into play, it was now the turn of the wet weather policy to have an effect. Luckily our day ground pass tickets allowed entry to the Vodafone Arena, with its roof closed to the rain. We could see on the scoreboard that no play was taking place on the outside courts, so we settled in to watch a few games under shelter. There was a strong French theme providing the netertainment: Amelie Maurezmo, Gael Monfils and Richard Gasquet. At the end of the day, the clouds cleared for a short time for us to explore the outer courts and set down to watch Australian crowd favourite Wayne Arthurs. The crowd was very excited about the prospect of watching one of the few Aussies left in the draw, however, a misdirected pain killing injection prior to the match turned his leg numb, and he had to hobble off the court and withdraw only after a couple of games. It was not the day we expected, but nevertheless very entertaining.