Olympic Movement Damaged by Jones Case
Jacques Rogge, IOC president, has recently admitted that the oncoming Olympic movement has been badly hurt by the American Sprinter Marion Jones scandal. Jones had been formally stripped of of her five Olympic medals after her use of drugs was found out during the BALCO investigation. The issue of whether her relay team mates will lose their medals as well, is still pending, with the IOC postponing a definitive decision. Rogge affirms though, that despite this scandal being damaging to the Olympics, it was still a good thing that more efforts are being made to fight doping. The more athletes caught, the more credibility the IOC will have.
To Jones' credit, she didn't attempt to resist giving back the three gold and two bronze medals she won from the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, after she admitted to having used performance-enhancing drugs.
The IOC had an executive board meeting in Laussane, Switzerland, where in they decided that Jones name will be removed from the record books for Sydney and Athens in 2004 (where she competed in the long jump). Again, Rogge had also mentioned that there shall be a hearing for the decision of whether the rest of Jone's relay team would also lose their medals— and sorry to say, it would seem that the US Olympic Committee has mentioned that they will not back up Jones' other teammates.
Apart from these things though, the IOC are hoping to introduce an early-warning system targeted on illegal gambling on sports events before the Beijing Olympics. They plan to work this out by observing the bona fide betting companies, and finding out the betting patterns.
