Talkin Sport - Jones Leaves Jail

Disgraced US sprinter Marion Jones has left prison after serving a six-month sentence for lying about steroid use and involvement in a drugs fraud case.

Jones, 32, left the facility in San Antonio, Texas, at 0800 (1300 GMT), a prison spokeswoman said.

Once one of the most famous female athletes in the world, Jones won five medals at the Sydney Olympics in 2000.

But these were stripped from the mother-of-two after she admitted lying to federal investigators in 2003.

Jones had denied knowing that she took the banned substance tetrahydrogestrinone (THG), known as "the clear," before the 2000 Olympics.

But in October 2007 she pleaded guilty to two charges of perjury and was sentenced in January 2008 by a federal judge in New York, reporting to prison on March 7.

Jones also pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators in 2003 about a separate cheque fraud case involving her former boyfriend, sprinter Tim Montgomery, the father of her son, Monty.

Montgomery and several others have been convicted in that scam.

Jones returned her medals even before the International Olympic Committee ordered her to do so, and has since had her name expunged from the record books.

Hers was one of a number of high-profile doping cases involving top American athletes that have prompted the US Olympic Committee to team up with Major League Baseball and the National Football League with an initiative aimed at combating drug use in US sport.

MARION JONES FACTS
Born: 12/10/75, Los Angeles

Olympic medals: 100m gold (2000), 200m gold (2000) 4x400m gold (2000) 4x100m bronze (2000), Long jump bronze (2000)

World championship medals: 100m gold (1997, 99), 200m gold (2001), 4x100m (gold), 100m silver (2001) Long jump bronze (1999)

* Jones was stripped of all her medals and results from September 2000

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