Five months ago, Marion Jones gave birth to her third child, Eva-Marie. Fifteen months ago, Jones was getting out of a Texas prison after a six-month stay for lying to federal investigators. Just over two years ago, she stood before the public and, teary-eyed, admitted to cheating her fans, friends, family, sport and country by using steroids before the 2000 Summer Olympics.
Amazingly, Jones -- who went from the most famous women's track star to the most infamous -- looked on Monday during a three-hour workout of agility drills, weightlifting and playing basketball in a church gym here as if she had never been through whatever discomfort there may be in childbirth, or, more to the point, through what was her own personal hell as a confessor.
"This is a second chance for me," Jones, now 34, told me in explaining her still youthful appearance highlighted by her trademark bright smile.
She was talking at that second about her undertaking to become a professional athlete again, this time as a basketball player, as she revealed to FanHouse and The New York Times. But she could have been talking about her image as well, which she just about decimated with her dishonesty. She was slapped with a two-year suspension from track competition and had little choice but to retire from the sport that made her a millionaire.
"I missed competitiveness," Jones said after I watched her at the Antioch Baptist Church go through one of her thrice-a-week three-hour basketball workouts. "I missed the challenges of participating in sports."
What Jones has embarked on over the past few months, since she decided to resurrect her athletic career, is doubly dangerous and, as such, admirable. Indeed, this will take guts she never had to summon, a fortitude we are still waiting to see from some other notable athletes who've strayed from the boundaries of integrity.
***
Sources: www.kevin-blackistone.fanhouse.com
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar