I certainly had my suspicions of Marion Jones long before she was ensnared in the BALCO scandal and ultimately exposed as a drug cheat. Given that she and her former husband, shotputter C.J. Hunter, lived and trained together, it was hard to accept that he was taking performance-enhancing drugs, as was revealed during the same 2000 Sydney Olympics where she was the number one American star, while she remained squeaky clean.

And I certainly gave her more benefit of the doubt regarding doping than I have Barry Bonds or Roger Clemens. I had my reasons. Not all of them were particularly good. Athletes don't always embrace reporters so we are suckers for a little kindness--and Jones was unfailingly nice and gracious to me over several extended encounters. And it doesn't hurt, at least with some of us guys, when the kindness comes with a smile and a pretty face. And hers is a very pretty face. By dubbing Jones and Hunter "Beauty and the Beast," we in the press were essentially casting her in a heroine's role.

After her Olympic glories and after Hunter was gone from her life, Jones and her new boyfriend, sprinter Tim Montgomery, were implicated in the BALCO scandal. At a particularly difficult time, the two were scheduled to fly to New York from North Carolina to meet with a gather of Olympic media. Montgomery called in sick, but Jones came alone. We reporters are suckers for a stand-up gal and she stood there and denied--with every fibre in her being--that she had ever used peformance-enhancing drugs.

It was a great performance, a helluva con. But for all my confessed weaknesses here, none of this was enough to convince me that she was clean. The real reason I was willing to believe her--or at least give her that benefit of the doubt--was that she didn't fit my profile of the drug cheat: the sprinter like Kelly White or the swimmer like Michelle Smith who suddenly blossom in late career, delivering far better performances than any they had in their prime years. Jones, by contrast, had been a dominant superstar from the get-go, setting national records as a California schoolgirl and finishing fourth in the 200 meters at the national championships back when she was just a high-school sophomore. Her career had never flagged and she was still in her prime. In other words, as naive as this may sound (and it sounds very naive now), she didn't seem to need drugs.

Yet there was this one blip on the radar way back in 1992. Jones was just 17 when she missed a drug test, which in the universe of track and field is treated exactly the same as a failed a drug test. Jones claimed she never got the notification. Attorney Johnnie Cochran rode to the rescue and eventually got the matter dismissed, attributing the mistake to a misplaced notice in her coach's office. In retrospect, of course, since drugs were already widespread in competition, especially in California, one has to wonder if Jones' had begun her cheating ways at an early age.

We may never know. And maybe the truth doesn't matter any more, at least not today after Jones was sentenced to six months in prison for lying to federal investigators--both about drugs and a check fraud scheme. The denials are all behind her now (and don't forget that Jones, like Clemens, filed a defamation of character lawsuit against one of her accusers). After all, it is an astounding fall from grace.

Still, even as she pled to the charges last fall, Jones wasn't prepared to tell the whole truth. She copped to her crimes and admitted cheating over a limited period of time. But she blamed her coach and even used that preposterous Bonds excuse that she thought she was taking flaxseed oil. We may never know exactly how long Jones has been cheating. But I certainly am ready to believe the worst, as I probably should have been long ago.