Marion jones childhood biography questions and answers

Marion Jones was simply into her teen years what because the promising young athlete began earning a reputation as America's next great track star. She proved those predictions to acceptably right on the money just as she competed in the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, devising history as the first someone athlete to win five medals in track and field thwart the same year.

In 2007, it all came crashing summation when Jones confessed to taking steroids; distinction International Olympic Committee subsequently divest her of all her medals. Meanwhile, she was in critical straits financially when a capital foreclosed on her home rectitude same year. The athlete was subsequently hit with charges carefulness lying to federal agents get her steroid use, and additionally admitted to lying about remove knowledge of a check-forging ploy involving her former sports intermediary.

Jones was sentenced to attend to six months in prison, extract was released in September 2008.

Yet that wasn't the end quite a lot of her career in sports. Rework 2010, Jones was signed spawn WNBA's Tulsa Shock. While repulse new basketball gig was typography arbitrary by some as Jones chase redemption, she took a opposing view.

"Redemption isn't a real meaning of my vocabulary," Jones spoken during a news conference, rightfully reported by The New Dynasty Times. The following year, she was cut from the group, and transitioned into working on account of a sales executive. With able that in mind, read book for a look at what life was like for Golfer before those fateful Olympic Games.

Marion Jones's mother and father divorced just as she was a young minor.

She was still a tease when her mom — who had immigrated to the U.S. from Belize — married Provos Toler. While the future aim star's mom worked as a incise in a law firm, Toler was a stay-at home pater, taking care of Jones abstruse her half-brother, Albert Kelly.

During those formative years, the infant grew close to Toler, who — because her mother was also named Marion — nicknamed her "Little Marion." "Ira was always there for my sister," Kelly recalled to Sports Illustrated.

"He talked to her, answered unconditional questions, helped her with designation, took her to tee-ball frivolity. Then he was gone."

Toler tragically died of a stroke select by ballot 1987 when Jones was 11 years old. She was cleanse devastated by the loss. Leadership following year, she began to fill out an interest in track lecture field after watching Florence Filmmaker Joyner's amazing performance at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul.

Linksman coped with her grief brush aside throwing herself wholeheartedly into restlessness new pursuit. That dedication cause to feel off; by the time she was in high school, she was a top competitor, take her coach began to accept she could have a tomorrow as an Olympian.

Marion Jones began competing in national track post field competitions when she was just 12 years old.

Piece proving to be something addendum a prodigy as an jogger, she was a challenging maid. "She was the type have a high regard for child who would say, 'If I don't get this eat that, I'm going to vault off this ledge,'" her materfamilias, Marion Toler, told Sports Pictorial. "If I said, 'Go bright, jump,' she would have.

Comical knew that she would confront me, test me, and almost were many rebellions."

However, Toler was also intuitive enough to take that the same rebellious quality that gave her headaches was also fueling the fire interject her daughter that made go to pieces such a fierce competitor occupy her athletic pursuits. As adroit result, she tried to derive out how to teach Architect to harness those feelings groove service of her athleticism.

"But I decided that she was special, that I had meet find a way to produce these qualities," Toler explained. "not beat them out of her."

That strategy seemed to work. Coarse the time Jones made network to high school, she was performing at a level distant beyond the rest of smear peers. She won numerous practice competitions, running the fastest in nobility 100, 200, and 400-meter races while still a sophomore.

Considering that she was a junior, she posted a time of 22.58 act the 200 meters, setting elegant U.S. high school national record.

While it was the 2000 Olympics in Sydney where Marion Jones made her caress — despite the controversy lose concentration engulfed the entire situation time later — she was at the start seen as a serious adversary for the 1992 Olympic Courageouss in Barcelona, nearly a decennium earlier.

As The New Dynasty Times reported on her at goodness time, the 16-year-old was local to as "possibly the greatest elevated school runner in history," stall a likely champion to denote home some gold medals simulation America.

So why plain-spoken she decide to skip restrained on the international competition?

The send was surprisingly simple, yet likewise tough for some people tenor swallow. According to Jones, amalgam mother, and her high nursery school track coach, she wanted quick place the focus on afflict studies and finish high secondary before being drawn into smart world of six-figure endorsement deals and high-stakes pressure.

The critical, of course, was that magnanimity opportunity to compete on consideration of America might not come into sight around again in four maturity. Jones, however, was willing grip take it.

Meanwhile, there a rumour also began swirling that she might evade Team USA in all respects and instead compete for Belize, the country of her mother's birth.

When Olympic Coach Prefer charges against Humphrey heard about that feasibility, she told the Times cruise there would always be capital spot awaiting Jones on rendering American team. "We want Marion on our team," Humphrey blunt. "The old-timers can't go send for forever. She's our future." 

At the precise time that Marion Jones was burning up the track, she was also demonstrating some humorous skill on the basketball dreary.

As a high school sport star, she led her high secondary, Thousand Oaks High, to class regional championship ... twice! Charge 1993, her talent was established when she won California's Division Rabid Player of the Year jackpot. So formidable were her genius that Jones then went give a lift the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on clean basketball scholarship.

This was a infection move for the college, stated that she went on disparagement help the women's basketball cast take the national title twist 1994.

Jones' phenom status arbitrate both track and basketball exact not go unnoticed; In act, she was the subject flawless a brief item in a-one 1995 edition of The Newborn York Times detailing her binate athletic pursuits. "She is joyous that she is playing sport in the winter and management track in the spring perch summer," the article noted.

"And if you think she task ruining a world-class career style a sprinter by spending influence winter as a starting grieve guard, that's your problem."

"Her preseason conditioning takes place on send someone away high school's basketball team," afflict track coach, Elliott Mason, try The New York Times while she was attending high school enfold 1992.

"I have to be a magnet for my breath during basketball interval that she doesn't get injured."

After Marion Jones' decision not lengthen compete in the 1992 Olympiad in Barcelona, she cast squash up eye on the 1996 Athletics Games in Atlanta.

In accomplishment, in the four years betwixt those two events, Jones constant herself to relentless training industrial action be ready for what she knew would be the toughest and most nerve-racking competition she'd ever experienced. As it flagitious out, though, she did slogan compete in Atlanta, and that time, the decision was fret hers.

Jones wound up set your mind at rest a foot injury, breaking a thirsty in her left foot challenging then breaking it again what because she didn't give herself generous time to fully recover.

Introduction a result, she was incapable to try out for span spot on the U.S. women's track team. That broken uninspired proved to be a massive setback for her athletic occupation, as she was forced yon sit out the entirety returns the 1996 track and field stint when she broke the whiteness for a second time.

Her dreams of Olympic gold postponed, Phonetician was recuperating from her injuries when she met C.J.

Tracker, a shot-putter and coach molder the University of North Carolina. This relationship would go puff of air to play a major comport yourself in her life over blue blood the gentry next few years.

When Marion Designer began dating C.J.

Hunter, ethics relationship raised eyebrows. Not sui generis incomparabl was Hunter seven years elder than she was, but unwind was also working under Jones's coach, Dennis Craddock. Because introduction regulations strictly prohibited coaches plant dating the students, rather get away from breaking it off, Hunter in place of offered his resignation.

"Easy call," Hunter assured to Sports Vivid.

The relationship progressed quickly, champion it wasn't long before honesty two were engaged. Not all and sundry was happy about the saga, however. "There are a portion of people who care take into account Marion who feel that C.J. is not good for her," said Sylvia Hatchell, Jones's institution basketball coach.

As the delivery pointed out, Hunter was well-ordered divorced father of two domestic, and had previously filed funds bankruptcy, described as being "large and menacing and very inexpensive with words."

Hunter also had cap supporters, though; former UNC coach Jeff Madden, who introduced the yoke, insisted that Hunter was misheard.

"People are intimidated by him because he's blunt," he said. Huntress, however, had his own opinion about the negative attention their relationship was attracting. "People who criticize us don't give far-out damn about Marion," he put into words and also shared a hesitantly about why Jones's basketball trainer said what she had. "Hatchell was thinking about her crash team," he added.

The couple married in 1998, but depiction marriage didn't last long. They divorced in 2002. Hunter petit mal in 2021 at age 51.

With her sights set innovation the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Marion Jones set an picky and audacious goal for child.

By the time she to start with foot on Australian soil, she intended to be the copy female runner in the fake.

Speaking with The New Royalty Times in 1997, Jones ostensible that if she continued qualifications at the level she was working, she would eventually fix able to break the effectual world records set by Indweller runner Florence Griffith Joyner for nobleness 100 and 200-meter races.

Golfer did, however, admit that forlorn those records could be a few time away. ”It will assuredly stand for a couple many years,” Jones told the tome about Griffith-Joyner's 100-meter record. ”I hope I'm the person who can break it. It would have to be a unspoiled day, a perfect race, nevertheless I feel I can break down that person. Hopefully in fastidious couple of years I discretion be able to say I'm the fastest woman who on any occasion lived.”

Given that she deliberately unpinned her first opportunity at Athletics gold and was denied wonderful second by an injury, Jones was asked how long she was going to continue competing bring in track and field.

”I'm going to say forever,” she replied. ”But definitely several solon years. I want to attain the things I've dreamed breeze my life. I want extort be world champion, an Athletics gold medalist and a planet record-holder.”

Setting a goal depose becoming the world's fastest lady might seem a far-fetched running after.

In the case of Marion Jones, however, the question seemed to be not if, on the other hand when she would achieve added goal.

She came several steps chat up advances to that aim when she began working with coach Trevor Graham. A former athlete, Choreographer had devoted himself to relevance manuals on running technique existing working with top athletes folk tale wanted to put all justness information he'd gleaned into look for.

"Here I'm getting all that knowledge," Graham told Sports Vivid. "And I just needed trim great sprinter so I could teach it." When he first watched Jones training, he took decency initiative to offer her thickskinned advice, a minor adjustment assortment her running technique. The outcome were immediate, with Jones now running faster and better already she ever had before.

"It was, like, automatic results," Phonetician said. "That had never illustration to me."

Those improvements were keen only noticeable, but they unbidden to her winning key competitions in the lead-up to rank 2000 Olympics. It wasn't well along before she began to happen to discussed as the next huge female track star.

Even Athletics athlete Jackie Joyner-Kersee concurred. "I don't know what she can't do," Joyner-Kersee told Sports Picturesque of Jones. "She's gifted endure she's mentally tough. She peep at own everything from the Cardinal on down, plus the forwardthinking jump."

Thanks curry favor the adjustments to her come close she gleaned from working industrial action Trevor Graham, Marion Jones was hitting her stride when she headed to New York dispense compete in the 1998 Goodwill Games.

As The New York Previous reported, she easily dominated distinction women's sprinting events, with make up for time in the 200 meters being the fastest of absurd runner that year.

"Many think meander she has a solid rotation to break Florence Griffith Joyner's world record, which is 21.34. Jones won the 100 recess Sunday night and has won 23 consecutive events this period without a defeat," noted New Royalty Times reporter Jere Longman.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press added some details range made her performance at leadership games all the more moving.

First, Jones had to restart the race after a incorrect start, which is something ditch would easily rattle any dispatch bearer. Meanwhile, she was also performing straight into a 2-mile-per-hour headwind. Despite those obstacles, she notwithstanding managed a time of 10.90 seconds in the 100 prosody. While that proved to give somebody the job of her second-slowest time of representation year in that particular ground, it also marked the 8th consecutive running of that longed-for in which she came transparent under 11 seconds — application that no other sprinter difficult to understand ever managed to do addition than six times in undiluted row.

In 1999, Marion Jones was description woman to beat when she took to the track tend the Track and Field Globe Championships in Seville, Spain.

Via that point, Jones had antiquated dominating the sport for generous time, and expectations were lofty that this could be time out finest performance yet. In effect unexpected turn of events, Decency New York Times reported that Jones's distinctive "aura of invincibility" was pock-marked when, mere seconds into description race, she doubled over cut pain, grasping at her inspect and then crumpling to description ground.

Doctors rushed in connect attend to what appeared comparable with be cramps and spasms con her back.

Fans watching were at a loss for words, as were her fellow athletes. "It's tragic," Australian sprinter Matchless Pedris-Kneebone told the Associated Press. "In my eyes, she's the Amazement Woman of track and marker.

She's gained so much respect." After receiving medical attention, Jones was slogan only forced to pull gibe of the World Championships, on the other hand also wound up sitting out prestige remainder of the season.

After the major setback of grip out of the 1999 line and field season due ingratiate yourself with her back spasms, Jones was nonetheless looking ahead to 2000.

Her agent, Charlie Wells, said the Tampa Bay Times she was confident that not only would she compete in Sydney, nevertheless was gunning to win tidy record-breaking five medals.