Marion Jones' Sydney medals to be reallocated

Karolos Grohmann,Reuters
Tuesday 08 December 2009 13:05 GMT
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Marion Jones' Sydney Olympic individual sprint and long jump medals will be reallocated this week but her 100m gold will not be given to Greece's Katerina Thanou due to her own involvement in doping.

A senior International Olympic Committee (IOC) source told Reuters on Tuesday that its Executive Board, meeting on Wednesday and Thursday, would upgrade athletes in the 100m and 200m sprints as well as the long jump, in which Jones won bronze, but would not reallocate her 100m gold medal.

American Jones was stripped in 2007 of her 100, 200 and 4x400 gold and long jump and 4x100 bronze Sydney Olympic medals for using banned drugs.

She served a jail sentence for lying to federal prosecutors about her steroid use.

An appeal by Jones's relay team mates, who were also stripped of their medals because of her doping, is still pending at the Court of Arbitration for Sport and no decision will be taken about those medals.

Pauline Davis-Thompson of the Bahamas, who won the 200 metres silver in Sydney, will be upgraded to gold and Russian Tatyana Kotova will be given the long jump bronze medal.

But Jones's 100m gold medal will not be given to Thanou, who won silver but four years later missed a doping test on the eve of the Athens Olympics and said she had been involved in a motorcycle crash.

Thanou was banned from competing in the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing for bringing her sport into disrepute in Athens.

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