On ‘Oprah,’ Jones Admits to Mistake

Marion Jones gave her first interview since being released from prison for lying to federal investigators, saying on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” on Wednesday that she believes she could have won her medals at the 2000 Olympics without performance-enhancing drugs.Jones also tearfully read a letter she said she wrote to her two children during her six-month prison term. “I truly believe that the reason I made the awful mistake and a few thereafter was because I didn’t love myself enough to tell the truth,” Jones said. Jones was sentenced for two counts of lying to federal officials in the Balco investigation and in a check-fraud case that also snared Tim Montgomery, Jones’s former boyfriend. She pleaded guilty last October in United States District Court in White Plains, and Judge Kenneth M. Karas announced her six-month sentence in January. She was released from a federal detention center in Fort Worth on Sept. 5.Jones, 33, forfeited the three gold and two bronze medals she won at the Sydney Olympics in Australia. She said Wednesday that losing the medals was not the hardest part.“It wasn’t as difficult to give back the medals because it’s not about the hardware,” Jones said. “It was about that memory. So that memory is what will be tarnished. That’s what’s hard.” Jones was not caught using performance-enhancing drugs — she was exonerated after the backup sample to her only failed drug test, in 2006 for EPO, came back negative — but for lying to investigators in the Balco case. She admitted in court that she knew the substance she had taken in 2000 was not flaxseed oil but a performance-enhancing drug, and that she lied to cover up her use. She said the drug, known as the clear, was provided to her by her coach, Trevor Graham, and that she stopped working with him once she realized he was giving her a prohibited substance.CONTINUE READING...