Former Olympic champion Marion Jones has said she was ”shocked” over reports that she had failed a drugs test at the United States Championships in June.
The statement, issued by her attorney Howard Jacobs, was the American’s first comment on the matter since US media reports on Friday that the American had tested positive for the banned blood booster erythropoietin (EPO).
”I was shocked when I was informed about the positive A sample,” the 30-year-old Jones said in the statement.
”I have requested that the testing of my B sample be expedited and done as soon as possible.
”I would like also to note that only my lawyers have the authority to speak on my behalf in this matter, and I will have no further comment until the results of the B sample are released.”
The normal deadline for when an athlete’s B sample can be analysed is two weeks after the A sample has been analysed, which would give a date in early September.
Media reports in the US said that Jones provided the urine sample after the first round of the women’s 100m at the US Championships on June 23 and that it had taken two months to complete the analysis.
Jones, who won three gold medals at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, abruptly pulled out of a planned race at the Zurich Golden League meeting on Friday as the media reports appeared.
She flew back to the US with the Swiss meeting organisers saying that she had told them she was leaving for ”personal reasons”.
If her second B sample also tests positive for EPO, Jones, who has repeatedly denied ever have taken drugs despite persistent allegations, would face a minimum two-year ban from competition which would likely end her controversial career.
She is the third major American athlete to be involved in a drugs scandal in recent months.
Olympic and world 100m champion Justin Gatlin tested positive for testosterone in April and cyclist Floyd Landis failed a test for the same substance during the Tour de France, in which he was initially declared the winner.
Jones’s former coach, Trevor Graham, currently Gatlin’s coach, is also under investigation by the US Anti-Doping Agency and world athletics body IAAF.
Her current coach, Steve Riddick, has scoffed at suggestions the sprint star used banned drugs such as EPO, which is more usually associated with middle- and long-distance runners and cyclists to give them extra energy.
”It is virtually impossible for Marion Jones to take EPO and run in the nationals,” Riddick, Jones’s coach of two years, told US papers. ”It just doesn’t make any sense to me.” — AFP
