She did it, but all will pay

Marion Jones’ admission of steroid use Friday in a New York courtroom tarnishes more than her own reputation: It stains every elite athlete, even those who have never been accused of doping.

That’s the conclusion of many in the athletic and anti-doping communities trying to come to grips with the confession of drug use by one of the highest-profile competitors in sports.

“Her sins will be felt by all athletes,” said Michael Straubel, a defense attorney for athletes in doping cases and director of the sports law clinic at Valparaiso University School of Law.

Jones, who first made her name as a star high school athlete in Oxnard and Thousand Oaks, pleaded guilty Friday to lying to investigators in 2003 about her illegal steroid use. She admitted that she had taken a then-undetectable form of the substance before the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, where she won a record three gold and two bronze medals in track.

The admission sent shock waves through the sports and legal communities, not least because Jones had for years steadfastly denied steroid use and did so in the face of reports that tied her to the infamous Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative. BALCO allegedly dispensed performance-enhancing drugs to dozens of athletes, including baseball slugger Barry Bonds, who has denied knowingly using banned substances.

Even people who had long been skeptical of Jones’protestations of innocence were stunned by Friday’s developments.

“It shows the demonstrated willingness of many athletes to lie through their teeth,” said John Hoberman, a University of Texas professor and expert on steroids in sports. He argues that the Jones case testifies to how the pressure to excel alters moral compasses and drives a surprising number of elite athletes to performance-enhancing drugs.

“A lot of us did not believe that doping was occurring on the scale it turned out to be,” he said. “Many athletes held up to us as role models have turned out to operate in an ethics-free zone.”

Jones’ plea follows admissions to prior drug use by other prominent international athletes this summer, including Danish cyclist Bjarne Riis, who won the 1996 Tour de France and placed third in 1995. And it refocuses the spotlight on others who have vehemently insisted on their innocence in the face of accusations that in some cases have persisted for years.

These include seven-time Tour winner Lance Armstrong, who has been dogged by suspicions of doping since 1999, Bonds and 2006 Tour de France winner Floyd Landis, who this year mounted a costly and ultimately fruitless defense against a doping allegation.

Three arbitrators split 2-1 last month to uphold doping charges brought against Landis by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, despite Landis’ contention that faulty and suspect lab procedures produced his positive results. Landis has not said whether he will appeal the ruling to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland, the final arbiter.

“It’s human nature to doubt these stories,” Straubel said. The Jones case, though, “creates more cynicism and makes it harder for the [doping arbitration] process to be objective and fair.”

For critics of that process, many of whom complain it is rigged against athletes, the Jones case was seen tilting the playing field more steeply against those accused. John Collins, a Chicago sports lawyer, dismissed the Jones plea, however, saying that athletes almost always lose anyway. “How could my job be any harder?” he said.

Others expressed concern that the Jones case could foster cynicism extending even to athletes whose only offense is turning in an exceptional performance.

“It’s a sad day for the vast majority of athletes who don’t use drugs,” said Edward G. Williams, a New York attorney who has represented three athletes caught in the BALCO snare. “Henceforth, every time there’s a superb performance or a victory, they’re going to be suspect. When a clean athlete does well, how do you remove that tarnish?”

Indeed, the case against Jones reflects a sea change in doping prosecutions: Increasingly, the most significant victories are being scored not by the sports anti-doping authorities, who rely on laboratory tests of urine and blood samples, but by law enforcement agencies, which occasionally find illegal steroid use while investigating other crimes.

For example, U.S. authorities charged Jones not with taking illegal drugs but with lying to government officials, who were probing what they described as a “sprawling check fraud/money laundering scheme” in which she was implicated along with her ex-boyfriend, sprinter Tim Montgomery, and her former coach, Steve Riddick.

Similarly, although Bonds may not be legally vulnerable to allegations he used illicit substances provided by BALCO, he reportedly remains the object of a federal probe into possible perjury. According to published accounts, in testimony before a grand jury he denied obtaining steroids from BALCO.

Jones has never failed a drug test, a fact that also underscores the strongest criticism of the international anti-doping program: its inability to develop dependable tests to distinguish the guilty from the innocent.

Sports doping expert Charles Yesalis, professor emeritus at Penn State, said the Jones case “ties in to what I’ve been saying for 20 years -- that drug use is epidemic and drug testing doesn’t work.”

For leading anti-doping officials who contend that many guilty athletes escape punishment by bamboozling or evading lab tests, the emergence of the Jones case out of a money-laundering investigation is encouraging.

“Before, anybody could just say, ‘I never tested positive before,’ and there was no recourse,” said Richard W. Pound, chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency. “Now, with all of these government investigations, there’s the ability to catch these cheaters in other ways. People won’t be so quick to believe that excuse anymore.”

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michael.hiltzik@latimes.com

lance.pugmire@latimes.com