Pardon the intrusion...

[CookyMonzta]

..But I would suspect that EPelle would agree with me that there are other awards that must be revoked and/or rescinded from Marion, almost all of which relate to her 2000 campaign. I would think that several top athlete awards for the year 2000 (including, I suspect, the 2001 Laureus) will have to be redistributed to the people who were 2nd in the voting for each of these awards...

...The one that bothers me the most is the 2000 Associated Press Athlete of the Year Award. When Venus Williams went on a 35-match winning streak that included Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, defeating the #1 (Martina Hingis) and #2 (Lindsay Davenport) seeds in both, and Marion failed to win the long jump or even come close to FloJo's WRs, I thought this award was a shoo-in for Venus, because never before had anyone defeated the #1 and #2 seeds in back-to-back majors.

Assuming the AP came to take back Marion's 2000 award, I want to know if they gave it to Venus by now. They'd be nothing less than a bunch of dirtbags if they declared the award vacant.

[El Toro]

Why are you so keen to give the award to a player in a sport which had a joke testing regime at that time and which is only marginally better now? Not a comment on any of the players you named, even that cokehead druggie Hingis.

[CookyMonzta]

Why are you so keen to give the award to a player in a sport which had a joke testing regime at that time and which is only marginally better now? Not a comment on any of the players you named, even that cokehead druggie Hingis.

Whether drug testing in tennis was a joke compared to track is irrelevant to the issue at hand, because players like Hingis engaged in dirty deeds on their own. Marion was part of a widespread organized program not much different from the state-sponsored programs of the GDR and USSR. When the hammer fell on her program's godfather (in her case, Victor Conte), she had an obligation to bring her participation in the program, and maybe the program itself, to a much smoother, if not quicker, end than what we actually saw...

...Instead, she lied under oath, perhaps in the hopes of riding out the scandal and resuming her career unscathed. Unfortunately, being one of the biggest fish in the scandal, if not the biggest, she brought even greater damage upon herself. She might have done better to sing on her day in court in 2003, turned over her 5 medals at that moment, come back in 2006 and perhaps make the 2008 team (if not in the 100, then maybe the 200, 400 or even 800), and win maybe 2 or 3 medals. But she let the suspicions linger for 4 years, to the point where she brought even greater suspicion upon herself by incurring an A-test for EPO (she passed the B-test), and ended up broke, with the feds leaning on her for possible perjury, to get her to finally sing.

Her mistake was that she waited until she was 32 and putting her house up for sale to finally confess, pretty much depriving herself of any chance of redeeming herself. Nevertheless, whether she confessed in 2003 or 2007, her confession still erases her 2000 Olympic campaign and the awards that came as a result of it. The AP Award, as one of many she received in 2000 and 2001, must go to Venus Williams.

I almost wished Marion had confessed in 2001, and spilled the beans on Conte and BALCO at that moment; then maybe, even in disgrace, she would have been the sport's savior. But then again, those who were in the program with her, including C.J. Hunter and her coach, would have called her a crazy, lying lunatic back then.

What has yet to be resolved is when exactly did Trevor Graham put her on the program. Did he start on her the sooner she walked into his camp in 1996 (in which case, her 1997-98 seasons and her 10.65/21.62 need to be fully investigated, because those performances still stand, right up to and including everything before Sept.1, 2000), or did he put her on the program after her back gave out in the 1999 World Championships 200 semis, in fear that her bad back would keep her from winning 5 Olympic medals, let alone 5 gold? Or, as the retroactive suspension indicates, the real dirt started when she walked into BALCO headquarters sometime in August, 2000?

[EPelle]

Re: Pardon the intrusion...

...there are other awards that must be revoked and/or rescinded from Marion, almost all of which relate to her 2000 campaign...

There were quite a bit of them. Some, however, aren:t material. There were honours collected and received from delegates and higher-ups (including the USA president) which were rightfully given based on the information they had at hand at the time and being uninvolved in the sport. Perhaps it would be best to have those awards vacated that season (2000), rather than attempting to re-distribute anything. And, at this point, it is too late, as any such motions should have been drawn up in october.