Patricia Sheridan's Breakfast With ... Marion Jones
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Marion Jones -
Marion Jones, left, participates in a basketball clinic at a high school in Belgrade, Serbia, earlier this month as part of a U.S. State Department program, presenting lectures and basketball clinics to young adults.
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Disgraced former Olympian Marion Jones served a six-month prison term for lying to federal investigators about taking a performance enhancing drug called "clear" before track competition. She won five medals in the 2000 Summer Olympics and had to return them. In 2007, she finally admitted taking the drug.
Her 2010 book, "On the Right Track," is a candid account of how prison changed her. After her release she played in the WNBA with the Tulsa Shock. Now 36, she was cut by the team in July and is back home in Austin, Texas. As one of the guest speakers at the eighth annual Pennsylvania Conference for Women in Philadelphia on Tuesday, she will talk about dealing with her mistakes and making a new life for herself, her husband and their two children. She created the program "Take a Break," which encourages young people to think before they act.
You made the decision to remain in the public eye after serving your prison sentence, but did you realize it would mean having to talk about your mistakes over and over?
I mean, I knew that from now until the day that I'm not here anymore it's going to be part of my legacy. But I didn't really think about it. What I thought about when I made the decision to not just disappear and live a quiet, normal life was that every day I teach my kids that we all make mistakes, but it's what you do after you've made the mistake. If I'm telling them that every day and if they would have seen me just disappear, and just kind of give up, then I could have been seen by them as a hypocrite.
I want to live what I teach. It is one of the reasons I decided to pursue my dream of playing basketball again and to continue to speak, even if it's about stuff that's not all that comfortable to deal with. Ultimately I want my kids to say, 'You know what? Mom made mistakes but she didn't just give up, she decided to make a difference.'
See the You wrote that keeping the secret was more damaging to you than telling the truth?
Yeah, that was the hardest part, just knowing in the back of your mind that at some point everything that I've worked for can be taken away and not feeling that I could share anything that was going on with the people who supported me, loved me. It's very hard. Anybody knows from the age of 4 on up that holding onto a secret or a lie is not an easy thing to do. So comparing it with the moment I actually shared with the world and my family, yeah that was hard, but it was more of a relief than anything. It was OK now that it's out there.
First Published October 24, 2011 12:00 am
