Tonight I shed a Tear
Tonight I shed a tear for one my all time favorite people-Marion Jones. In a news conference yesterday she acknowledged using steroids starting in 1999. She claims that she didn’t know they were Steroids, she thought she was injecting Flaxseed Oil. I first remember seeing Marion run when she was a high school junior and then later saw her win the NACA women’s basketball championship in 1994, while attending the University of North Carolina. Watching her win 5 medals in the 2000 Olympics was a special treat. Now we find out that she was using performance-enhancing drugs. I doubt if she was the only one, but she is the one that got caught. There has been suspicion for the past 3-5 years and now the speculation is over. Jones admits that she unknowingly did take THG (the clear).
Personally, I always wanted to see her play professional basketball in the WNBA, maybe a part of me knew that her shinning star would fall from the sky under the tainted aura drugs in track and field. Track and field has long been under suspicion of having its’fair share of cheats. I remember the 1968 Sport Illustrated cover that had hypodermic needles and pills on the cover as an expose on cheating in the Olympics. Cheating is something that goes along with sport, and it’s not new, just more pedestrian in nature.
My Luvv for Marion as an athlete will never wane. I feel that while Marion is responsible for her actions, it is our society that encourages athletes to cheat to win. We promote winning by any means necessary and then we punish the ones that do exactly what we promote. We cover the winners, not the losers or even the team or person that comes in second. We encourage 5th graders to jump teams, to fake birth certificates and parents and guardians condone it for the purpose of winning a mendacious national championship. Parents demonstrate poor behavior on the soccer field and in the gym in the name of making sure their kid is getting treated fairly. In the end, we have reached a redoubtable period in youth sports. It use to be that kids went out to play and parents went to work.
Taking a performance-enhancing drug doesn’t make you a world-class athlete. You have to have talent, work hard and some luck along the way. The real issue here is the health related impact that Steroids have on the health of athletes-Lyle Alzado of the Raiders died from a brain tumor brought on by his use of Steroids. Should these tainted athletes go to Jail? No, they should be allowed to find their character and integrity, conduct public presentations to young athletes on the pitfalls of seeking adulation and fame over the joy of the games they play.
I wish Marion the best and hope that she land on her feet.
See NY Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/05/sports/othersports/05araton.html?ref=sports#