December 13, 2007	Thursday	Zilhaj 2, 1428

LAUSANNE (Switzerland), Dec 12: The International Olympic Committee (IOC) formally stripped Marion Jones of her five Olympic medals Wednesday, wiping her name from the record books following her admission that she was a drug cheat.

The IOC also banned the disgraced American athlete from attending next year’s Beijing Olympics in any capacity and said it could bar her from all future games.

Jones had already handed back the three gold medals and two bronze she won at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

Last month, the International Association of Athletics Federations erased all of Jones’ results dating to September 2000, but it was up to the IOC to formally disqualify her and erase her Olympic medals.

The decision was announced by the IOC President Jacques Rogge at the end of a three-day executive board meeting.

Jones won gold medals in the 100 metres, 200 metres and 1,600-metre relay in Sydney, and bronze in the long jump and 100-metre relay. She was the first female track and field athlete to win five medals at a single Olympics.

In addition to those medals, the IOC also disqualified Jones from her 7th-place finish in the long jump at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

The IOC postponed a decision on redistributing her medals, including whether to strip her American relay team-mates and whether to upgrade doping-tainted Greek sprinter Katerina Thanou to gold in the 100.

After long denying she ever had used performance-enhancing drugs, Jones admitted in federal court in October that she started using steroids before the Sydney Games. She said she’d used the designer steroid “the clear” from September 2000 to July 2001.

The executive board declared Jones ineligible for the Beijing Games “not only as an athlete but also in any other capacity.”

Jones has retired as an athlete and is banned by US officials from competition for two years.

But the IOC wants to keep her from going to the Olympics as a coach or in any other role, and said she could face a lifetime Olympic ban pending the outcome of the BALCO investigation.—AP