SAN JOSE, California, 28 May 2004 — Sprint star Marion Jones has continued her counterattack against anti-doping officials by going public with what her camp claims is flawed evidence against her.
“This reminds me of someone trying to take away your license for drunk driving, and they didn’t do a sobriety test, but a bartender kept a ledger with your name and the amount of alcohol supposedly given,” Joseph Burton, a lawyer for Jones, told The New York Times on Wednesday. Jones’ representatives showed The Times and the San Jose Mercury News some of the documents they were given on Monday in a meeting with representatives of the US Anti-Doping Agency. According to the newspapers, the documents included in part negative steroid test results, calendars and a ledger.
Burton cited what he called flaws in the evidence — which included drug test sample collection on dates when Jones was en route to Sydney, Australia, for the 2000 Olympics.
In another instance, two tests apparently conducted on the same day with consecutive identification numbers showed different results. And one item showing apparent track times on calendar pages that appear to outline a drug schedule said to be for Jones, reflect elite men’s times in the 100 meters — 9.84sec, 9.86 and 9.97 — rather than women’s times.
Both newspapers said that the evidence seen by their reporters was apparently not all of the evidence anti-doping officials possess.
USADA’s director of legal affairs, Travis Tygart, declined to detail any evidence the agency has against Jones.
“I think the documents have some surface emotional appeal, but little evidentiary substance,” Burton told the San Jose Mercury News. Burton is trying to distance Jones from the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO) steroid case. BALCO founder Victor Conte is among four men indicted on charges of providing illegal performance-enhancing drugs to elite athletes and other US sportsmen. Last week, 2003 double world sprint champion Kelli White was banned for two years for using illegal performance-enhancers, admitting her transgression after she was confronted with evidence collected in the BALCO investigation.
