Former Olympic track and field superstar Marion Jones pleaded guilty Friday to federal criminal charges that she lied to investigators about using steroids before her five-medal performance at the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, and about her involvement in an unrelated New York-based counterfeit check scheme.
The admission that she used steroids, made in U.S. District Court in White Plains, N.Y., represents a fall from grace for a woman who was once among the most celebrated athletes in the world.
For years, the 31-year-old sprinter persistently and passionately denied ever taking performance-enhancing drugs, but her statements in court on Friday not only make it probable she will be stripped of her five medals -- a women's track and field record -- but also cast grave new doubts over sports' greatest accomplishments in this steroid era.
Jones faces sentencing Jan. 11. The plea agreement stipulates that she receive no longer than a six-month sentence.
Outside court, Jones faced the media, tears streaming down her face, and announced she was "retiring from the sport of track and field, a sport which I deeply love."
"It is with a great amount of shame that I say I have betrayed your trust," Jones said. "I have let my country down."
In accepting a plea agreement, she also becomes the first athlete to be convicted who had ties to the BALCO scandal. A 2003 federal raid on the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative in Northern California forced illegal steroid use into the open. A number of athletes were swept up in the ensuing investigation, Jones and home run king Barry Bonds among them.
But for one magical summer, Jones won worldwide fame and Americans' hearts at the 2000 Olympics, winning gold in the 100- and 200-meter sprints and the 1,600 relay, and taking bronze in the 400 relay and the long jump. Those performances, now stained by her admission of steroid use, led the International Assn. of Athletics Federations to name her athlete of the year.
Arne Ljungqvist, chairman of the International Olympic Committee's medical commission, told The Times that Jones' being stripped of the medals is "a formality."
"They have her own statements, that's enough," he said. "They will take her medals."
The man leading the IOC's three-year-old investigation into Jones' involvement with the BALCO told the Associated Press that Jones' case could be finalized by the end of the year.
