The IOC formally stripped Marion Jones of her five Olympic
medals yesterday, wiping her name from the record books following
her admission that she was a drug cheat.
The IOC also banned the disgraced American athlete from
attending next year's Beijing Olympics in any capacity and said it
could bar her from all future games.
Jones had already handed back the three gold medals and two
bronze she won at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
She becomes the fourth American athlete in Olympic history to
have a medal taken away by the IOC, and the third for a doping
offense.
Last month, the International Association of Athletics
Federations erased all of Jones' results dating to September 2000,
but it was up to the IOC to formally disqualify her and erase her
Olympic medals.
The decision was announced by IOC president Jacques Rogge at the
end of a three-day executive board meeting in Lausanne,
Switzerland.
Jones won gold medals in the 100 meters, 200 meters and 4x400m
relay in Sydney, and bronze in the long jump and 4x100m relay. She
was the first female track and field athlete to win five medals at
a single Olympics.
In addition to those medals, the IOC also disqualified Jones
from her 7th-place finish in the long jump at the 2004 Athens
Olympics.
The IOC postponed a decision on redistributing her medals,
including whether to strip her American relay teammates and whether
to upgrade doping-tainted Greek sprinter Katerina Thanou to gold in
the 100.
The executive board declared Jones ineligible for the Beijing
Games "not only as an athlete but also in any other capacity."
Jones has retired as an athlete and is banned by US officials
from competition for two years. But the IOC wants to keep her from
going to the Olympics as a coach or in any other role, and said she
could face a lifetime Olympic ban pending the outcome of the BALCO
investigation.
The reshuffling of Jones' medals could affect the medal status
of more than three dozen other athletes.
(Shanghai Daily December 13, 2007)