Washington - Former world champion sprinter Marion Jones has admitted to using steroids prior to winning three gold medals at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the Washington Post reported late Thursday. In a letter sent to close family and friends, Jones claimed that a coach gave her a purported nutritional supplement that she later learned was a designer steroid.
Jones has long denied doping, but the allegations intensified after she was linked in 2004 to the San Francisco-based BALCO lab, which produced a liquid, oral steroid, known as THG or "the clear."
The Post reported on its website that a person who received the letter had read it over the telephone to a reporter. A second source with knowledge of Jones' legal circumstances, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the facts of the letter.
The letter to Jones' loved ones comes ahead of her expected guilty plea Friday in a federal court in New York to two counts of lying to federal investigators, according to the text of the letter. The agents had interviewed her about both steroids and her personal finances.
In the letter, Jones said that "the clear" was supplied to her by former coach Trevor Graham, who told her that it was flaxseed oil. She wrote that "red flags should have been raised" when Graham told her to keep the nutritional supplement a secret.
