Former Olympic champion and admitted steroid user Marion Jones has been invited to become a diplomat for the United States State Department. Apparently, governemnt officials felt her story of “redemption” after being less-than-truthful about her history of steroid use would be a source of inspiration for children in Eastern Europe.
Ryan Rowlands, a public affairs officer at the United States Embassy in Serbia, thought the former steroid user would be the perfect spokesperson for the “Take a Break” program.
Marion Jones never admitted to knowingly using anabolic steroids. She used a similar excuse as Barry Bonds. She claimed she thought she was using flax seed oil. The judge that sentenced her to prison was “troubled” by such an excuse and thought Jones was completely forthcoming about her steroid use. Nonetheless, Rowlands probably admired her bureacratic moxy at getting away with not telling the compete truth.
If Rowlands was impressed by the “flaxseed oil” explanation, it is surprising that Barry Bonds was not asked to fill the position. After all, Bonds was only convicted of a single obstruction of justice charge and likely won’t go to jail while track and field’s “Golden Girl” was convicted of lying about her steroid use (perjury) and check-fraud and sentenced to six months in prison.
“Marion served her penalty. She acknowledged what she did was wrong. She’s chosen to move beyond that,” Rowlands defended his choice of Jones. “Our country believes in resiliency. Many people who have had failures have gone on to great success in other things. Marion is showing how strong she is by moving beyond what was a very public failure and actually turning it into something where (she is) delivering an extremely positive message.”
Of course, plenty of people around Marion Jones were using anabolic steroids including her former husband C.J. Hunter and later her boyfriend sprinter Tim Montgomery.
BALCO founder Victor Conte personally supplied Jones with five performance-enhancing drugs including the anabolic steroids norbolethone as well as human growth hormone, EPO and insulin. Furthermore, he observed Jones inject herself with hGH in April 2001.
However, Marion Jones has never stopped maintaining that she truly thought she was steroid-free only later to learn that she was taking an undetectable designer steroid.
“I thought everyone on that track [in Sydney] was drug-free, including myself,” Jones said in an interview on the Oprah Winfrey Show.
Jones tried to elicit sympathy after she was released from prison by attributing her steroid use to naivete and “childhood trauma”
“I didn’t love myself enough to tell the truth,” Jones told Oprah. “I have hidden behind my obvious talent for much of my life for fear that the weak, sad, hurt and vulnerable Marion would emerge and ruin the plan for my life.”
Source:
Red, C. & Thompson, T. (October 20, 2011). Olympic sprinter Marion Jones relives tainted past, still hedges on full story. Retrieved from http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/more_sports/2011/10/20/2011-10-20_marions_message_is_going_worldwide.html
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