Sprinter Marion Jones reports to jail

FORT WORTH, Texas, March 7, 2008 (AFP) - Former Olympic champion Marion Jones, sentenced in January to six months prison for lying about using steroids, Friday reported to a Texas jail, US Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Traci Billingsley said. All Jones' results since September 1, 2000, have been stricken from the records and Jones has been banned from competition by the IAAF, the sport's governing body, even though she announced in October her decision to retire.





"Yes, that's confirmed," Billingsley said, saying the 32-year-old athlete reported shortly before noon to the Federal Medical Center-Carswell, a correctional facility in Fort Worth, where she was assigned the inmate number 84868/054.

Jones, who has been stripped of the three gold and two bronze medals she won at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, was sentenced to six months in jail and two years of probation for lying to federal investigators about her use of performance-enhancing drugs and about a check-fraud scheme that involved her former partner - Tim Montgomery.

Jones had been told she had until March 11 to begin her sentence.

In sentencing Jones, US District Court Judge Kenneth Karas said the athlete had not made "a momentary lapse in judgment, a one-time mistake, but inste