Marion Jones Returns Five Olympic Medals Won in Sydney

08 October 2007 -- Disgraced American athlete Marion Jones has given up the five track and field medals she won at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, days after admitting she used performance-enhancing drugs. And the 31-year-old has also accepted a two-year ban.

The three gold and two bronze medals were turned over to U.S. Olympic Committee and U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) officials at her attorneys' office in Austin, Texas on Monday.

Marion Jones acknowledged that she had taken a banned designer steroid known as "the clear" before the Sydney Olympics. She has agreed to forfeit all other results dating back to September first, 2000.

Top USOC officials also said they would support the IOC nullifying the results of the relay teams Marion Jones won medals with at the Sydney Olympics. The USA won golds in both the 400-meter and 1,600 - meter relays. Two members of the 400-meter relay, Torri Edwards and Chryste Gaines, have served doping bans since 2000.

Last Friday, Marion Jones pleaded guilty to two counts of providing false statements to federal investigators and will be sentenced in January.

Until then, Marion Jones had repeatedly denied that she had used banned drugs. She acknowledged she used "the clear," also called THG, for tetrahydrogestrinone, which has been at the center of a U.S. government probe into a San Francisco-area laboratory known as BALCO, from September 2000 to July 2001.

(Some information for this report was provided by AP and Reuters.)

Source: VOANews.com

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