King Kaufman's Sports Daily
Marion Jones tests positive: Drug cops aren't catching up. Cheats have gotten sloppy. Plus: Notre Dame's violation; Tigers catch eye of the Neifi!
Read more: Sports, Baseball, War on Drugs, Testosterone, NCAA, Football, Steroids, College Football, King Kaufman, Sports Daily
Aug. 21, 2006 | Floyd Landis, Justin Gatlin, Marion Jones. Raise your hand if you had three in the Prominent American Athletes in International Sports Testing Positive for Performance-Enhancing Drugs This Summer pool.
Congratulations. You really thought it would only be three? You beautiful optimist, you.
Jones jetted home to North Carolina Friday, skipping out on a meet in Zurich when word came that a drug test from the U.S. championships in June had come back positive for erythropoietin, a performance-enhancing blood booster better known as EPO. Jones, in an epic comeback from a disastrous 2005, had won the women's 100 meters at the U.S. championships in Indianapolis, alongside Gatlin, who won the men's 100 meters.
Gatlin, it was later revealed, had tested positive for testosterone at a meet in April in Kansas.
So we're now in the familiar cockamamie explanation phase of the Jones test, with her coach, Steve Riddick, saying on the one hand, "I don't know anything about it, I just coach her," and then on the other, "I smell a rat. It is virtually impossible for Marion Jones to take EPO and run in the nationals."
Right, Steve. So as long as we're clear here -- pardon the word "clear": What you're saying is you don't know anything about it, but you know she's not guilty. Well, I don't know anything about contradictory statements, but I know those statements are contradictory.
The National Weather Service has a Web page where you can track the progression of Jones' explanations for the positive test. The forecast calls for increasing conspiracy theories overnight, turning to a 70 percent chance of suddenly recalling mysterious B-12 shots tomorrow.
Jones is not considered to have failed her drug test until the so-called B sample comes back to confirm the A sample that turned up the EPO.
If Jones is holding out hope that the B sample test will exonerate her, well, let's just say she's a beautiful optimist too. Those results are expected in the next two weeks.
The interesting thing here is that EPO was always considered an endurance drug until the BALCO case. But sprinter Kelli White, who cooperated with authorities, revealed that sprinters did indeed take it. And, she said, they didn't have to worry about getting caught because investigators didn't check for it in runners who ran races shorter than 400 meters.
Now they do.
So given that information and the nabbing of three prominent American alleged drug cheats, it looks like the drug cops are finally catching up to the felonry. Don't be fooled.
