Ledger links Jones to several drugs

Associated Press

Dec 23, 2007 3:00 AM

Marion Jones used several different performance-enhancing drugs over a substantial period of time, according to a detailed doping calendar.

Jones' alleged doping regimen was part of a Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative ledger that featured the names of athletes along with the performance-enhancing drugs they were taking and results of urine tests. The other names on the list are redacted. The ledger was part of several pages of court documents released Friday.

After long denying she ever had used performance-enhancing drugs, Jones admitted in October that she had taken the designer steroid "the clear" from September 2000 to July 2001. "The clear" has been linked to BALCO, the lab at the center of the steroid scandal in professional sports.

The International Olympic Committee formally stripped her of five Olympic medals Dec. 12 and banned the disgraced American athlete from attending next year's Beijing Olympics in any capacity.

Jones took EPO, human growth hormone and THG using drops and injections, according to the court documents that show use in 2000 and 2001.

Jones' October doping admission came as part of her guilty plea to lying to federal investigators in the BALCO case about using steroids. She will be sentenced Jan. 11, and prosecutors had suggested to Jones the prison term would be a maximum of six months.

"The context of the defendant's use of performance-enhancing substances, as detailed in the documents seized from BALCO, shows a concentrated, organized, long-term effort to use these substances for her personal gain," the government's sentencing memo reads, "a scenario wholly inconsistent with anything other than her denials being calculated lies to agents who were investigating that same conduct."

In the court documents, former BALCO vice president Jack Valente acknowledges creating the doping calendar and says the "Marion J" entries refer to Jones.

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