Olympic champion Marion Jones appeared on Oprah today and told the talk-show queen that she took responsibility for lying to the government about steroids and a money laundering scam, lamented the impact it had on her friends and family, and is fretting about how she is going to tell her two sons about having to spend six months in jail.
"I have no regrets for doing what I did on October 5," she said of pleading guilty and admitting on national television that she lied. "I want people to understand everybody makes mistakes." She continued, "I truly think a person's character is determined by their admission of their mistakes and beyond that, what they do about it."
Oprah asked the disgraced former sprinter why she lied in the first place, to which Jones responded, "I made a mistake. I made the choice to, at that time, protect myself, to protect my family, and I've paid the consequences dearly."Aside from her jail sentence, the 32-year-old Jones was also stripped of the five medals (three of them gold) she won at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, and has also seen all of her performances since September of that year erased from the record books.
"I've returned the medals, the performances have been taken away. But they pale in comparison to seeing my husband cry," she said. "They pale in comparison to have to see my mother have to stand there in the courtroom and bawl."
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