Marion Jones, who was recently cleared of using banned blood-booster EPO, will never be able to repair her image and should retire from athletics, track legend Michael Johnson said on Tuesday.
In a column for the London-based Daily Telegraph, entitled ”Jones should retire now, for everyone’s sake”, Johnson said the former triple Olympic gold medallist would be forever blighted by ”a plethora of circumstantial evidence” surrounding alleged doping.
”I don’t believe Jones will ever be able to repair her image or get back to the type of performances that made her one of the highest-profile women athletes in the world,” said Johnson, the world 200m and 400m record holder.
”There has been far too much damage done to her reputation due to, if nothing else, the people she has surrounded herself with the last several years — some of whom have been involved in some of the largest drug scandals in the sport.
”Jones also has passed her prime as an athlete and lost several good years dealing with these scandals and allegations, which have surely made it difficult to focus.
”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.”
Jones tested positive for EPO at the United States Athletics championships in June but she learned earlier this month that the ”B” sample was negative, exonerating her.
Johnson warned that Jones’s experience could have far-reaching ramifications.
”People are now doubting the testing process that produced the positive ‘A’ sample to begin with,” he said, adding that Jones could be lining up a lawsuit against whoever leaked news of her original positive test.
”You can believe that lawyers for Olympic gold medallist Justin Gatlin, who tested positive earlier this year, and the Tour de France champion Floyd Landis, who tested positive for excessive testosterone levels, are preparing to use the Marion Jones ‘positive A, negative B’ scenario as proof of the fallibility of the testing process.”
Jones, who won three gold medals at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, had hoped she had put a cloud of doping suspicions behind her and re-emerged as a force in US sprinting this season.
The 30-year-old athlete has steadfastly denied ever using performance-enhancing drugs, but saw her name linked to the Balco steroid distribution investigation.
Her former partner Tim Montgomery, the father of Jones’s young son, was banished and his world 100m record run erased based on evidence collected in the Balco probe.
Jones struggled through doping accusations at the 2004 Olympic trials and flopped in Athens but has started a comeback that she hopes will launch her to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
At the Golden League meeting in Paris on July 8, Jones broke the 11-second barrier for the first time since 2002 to win the women’s 100m in 10,92sec. — AFP
