Highly Competitive Marion Jones is Not an East German or Russian

Some people who read this blog may not even have read about Marion Jones before today. She is the wnner of five medals at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia.

She was big, very big in US. As big as Sachin Tendulkar in India. She was a sprinting rock star. Delight of her sponsors. Inviting pictures, accentuating her selective anatomy, used to appear in media very frequently all over the world, including India. Like Sania Mirza's do in Indian newspapers today.

Jones, who won three gold and two bronzes medals in Sydney, pleaded guilty in a New York district court on Friday October 5, 2007 to lying to federal investigators when she originally told them she had never used performance-enhancing drugs.

I have seen Americans, including even fair guys like The Simpsons, making fun of East Germansand Russians athletes, alluding to their possible use of performance enhancing drugs.

What goes around comes around.

International sports are under cloud everywhere.

Earlier this year, "cleanliness" of Tour De France was debated hotly. (see cartoon below)

Today’s NYT (October 7, 2007) carries Harold Pinter’s, winner of Nobel Prize in Literature in 2005, interview. He says: “The whole brunt of the media and the government is to encourage people to be highly competitive and totally selfish and uncaring of others.”


Artist: Patrick Chappatte http://www.globecartoon.com/