Why You Shouldn't Believe Marion Jones: Vol. 20

Story by Eric.

(This is the 20th part of a long series titled, "Why You Shouldn't Believe Marion Jones". This series depicts the life and times of a (former) woman sprinter whose lies and cover-ups about doping in sport continue even through this day.)

Marion Jones's coach and her agent both cited personal reasons for Marion Jones’s departure from Zürich (which, incidentally, was said by an Aftonbladet sports blogger to have followed a blood test the evening prior), and Marion Jones’s family was brought into the equation by Riddick in a statement to media.

Marion Jones stated that she had gone through an incredibly difficult and challenging period of time leading up to 2006-August-18, and records – legal investment asset statements concerning the deed on her estate – demonstrate that she had an irreversible adverse action being taken against her.

Why is the omission of her legal fact – an issue which was personal and not for public consumption – so important to this argument? Should one view this as serious deception which makes it impossible for one to trust Marion Jones?

In light of her revealed deception, her previous statements of “fact” become clearer under review – not the least under scrutiny.

At the outset, the stated information Marion Jones made was done so wilfully and without the threat of action – real or otherwise perceived; there was no ostensible sign that Marion Jones was under duress to make a statement on her own behalf.

Having made statements which were not deduced, Marion Jones arranged for the public to receive information she desired to freely provide in matters concerning her.

This information, bearing no burden of proof, was discharged from Marion Jones as being factual. Any reference to those facts which could counter what Marion Jones described as having been truthful would be cast off by her legal counsel as being speculative and rumour-based – unsubstantiated innuendo in the absence of a mirrored statement made under oath.

Having stated “facts” as they were provided to the public – Marion Jones’s shock and dismay over a failed drugs test which caused her to cash in her chips for the season and wait to be exonerated, and misstating the motive about why she was withdrawn, we lose out on the opportunity to understand that there was an underlying valid and stark reason by means of insurmountable legal troubles which was not provided equal weight to assert whether or not Marion Jones was stating the truth in the matter of what caused her to be shocked.

Furthermore, that doubt then raises questions about the timing of the drugs-test announcement and when Marion Jones and her attorneys may or may not have been made aware of that adverse news.

This is important, because if there is doubt as to the exact day the revelation was made, and it comes to be known that it occurred well in advance of the day in August which Marion Jones stated she left Zürich at 05.00 for personal reasons which were construed by her attorney as her having received the news of the positive test in the early morning hours before she left, one is to doubt the claims made about the veracity of statements made on her behalf.

Consequently, that leads to a question about the leak and lack of action taken to ensure the perpetrator was caught, punished and faced punitive damages, and why Marion Jones simply decided to leave things up to God to figure out whilst she watches her savings dwindle down to its last couple thousand dollars – invariably a direct consequence to that leak.

If Marion Jones persistently pursued action against Conte, who, according to her counsel, did intentionally and deliberately make statements which caused her to lose financial opportunity (the settlement has never been disclosed, and the case was not moving that direction at the time it was decided out of court), and in direct response to threats of being left off the 2004 USA Olympic team decided she would sue rather than lose out on the opportunity to pursue her dreams, why then, therefore, did she surrender completely in matters not perceived, but real?

This is the same Marion Jones who once stated that on occasion, when she didn’t win, she had self-made opportunities available to her to revert to ways she didn’t like, conclusively stating that she didn’t like herself when wasn’t winning, and that she could be cranky, quiet and depressed until her next competition – presumably after having worked out the issues which may had been causing her to fail at winning.

Would Marion Jones the non-winner had taken herself completely out of contention in the first place to continue down a path which took her further from her own version of happiness rather than closer to it?

One should be able to conclude the existence of one fact from proof of another fact. However, if one is forced to doubt the reliability of what Marion Jones stated in relation to her chosen excuse matter, one will invariably begin to deeply question whether other matters of record were true, or if they, too, had been doctored in a way to present us a variation of what is to be considered truthful, but may not be accurate in whole – though not illegally stated by her counsel.

Doubting the veracity of Marion Jones’s statements sans her confession was to state that one did not fully trust Marion Jones to have had spoken the truth, or that part of her statements in this matter were inherently false.

That trust, having had been broken down by not once but on several occasions, had already incurred serious consequences to those who had previously requested that extension of expectation to her.

Marion Jones demonstrated a clear pattern of prior trust violations with people who valued her statements – each with an increasingly larger risk value which begun as relatively minor when they were viewed in isolation – the ultimate infringement on that confidence revealed through Marion Jones’s own revelation of having deceived on previous occasion; that final breach of trust on her part broke assurance in all that Marion Jones had ever stated in defence of herself by her own admission of guilt.

If you – by not having such conviction as to be able to completely and willingly rely and act upon Marion Jones’s “truths” without hesitation – are still to this day requested to carry a burden of belief in her statements beyond a reasonable doubt, you will be obligated, in favour of truth and justice and as reasonable persons basing decisions on intelligence and common sense, to establish that Marion Jones then, therefore, was not completely truthful beyond moral certainty.

You will draw conclusions that each lie she told contradicted the part of her which gave her moral worth and robbed others of their freedoms to make rational choices concerning Marion Jones; her lies lead fans to decide in a manner and fashion opposite to what they would have done had they known the truth about her, and to believe in those lies was in direct opposition to the knowledge and perceptiveness usually exercised by rational people.

However, if you remained stuck on the fence after making an attempt to get over at an earlier stage in your beliefs, consider making this wager with your life savings – or rationality, as it may be called: would you have been willing to take your hard-earned money to gamble in Las Vegas – or anywhere – and to have bet your house and home that on one roll of dice signifying Marion Jones’s “true” testimony about her dealings in life – declarations of her accords and her connections to drug cheats – you would have absolute certainty that you would roll sixes based on any distinct, irrefutable evidences of proof which Marion Jones had provided prior to her confession in due course regarding those events, namely that she had never had any connection to drugs or drugs-usage?

At what point in your decision-making process as a rational adult capable of making reasonable choices would you have drawn the line and considered the risk greater than the reward based solely on the testimony you were provided as you dangled your house keys over the play table board?

If you had 24 hours to consider your bet on Marion Jones, with everything you owned at stake, would the decision to bet on Marion Jones have caused you to lose sleep prior to her admission of guilt?

Would you have been more inclined at one point in time to do so again solely with what Marion Jones and her counsel had armoured you in the form of information?

Are you assured and convinced now that a “sure bet” would have been to avoid betting all together on her statements and explanations and instead to have waited for physical, incontrovertible truth offered up not as a defence to an allegation, rather as proponent evidence visible once and to all demonstrating extreme prejudice for truth as it matters on a case-by-case basis – not stretched and fit to blanket all suspicions as a whole?

Such "truths" have been presented in the form of Marion Jones's self-confession of wrong-doing, though she has minimised the extent of her drugs-taking, and again caused decisions to be taken based on limited information she had (and still is) passed off as being factual.