Former Olympic medalist Marion Jones speaks to reporters after her sentencing at the U.S. Federal Courthouse in White Plains, New York, January 11, 2008.
First came the Olympic stardom, then the steroid allegations and finally a six-month prison sentence for lying to a federal investigator. Getting caught up in a check-fraud scheme her onetime boyfriend and father of one of her children, Tim Montgomery, was involved in didn’t help much either. Jones became an iconic athlete after her five Olympic medals in track and field at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia. But shortly after her rise to fame, she was ensnared in a nationwide steroid scandal surrounding the San Francisco drug supplier BALCO and later admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs to help secure her medals. In 2008, the International Olympic Committee voted to strip Jones and her relay teammates of their Sydney medals, although seven of her teammates won theirs back on appeal.
