Marion Jones

Marion Lois Jones (born October 12, 1975), also known as Marion Jones-Thompson, is an American former world champion track and field athlete and a former professional basketball player for Tulsa Shock in the WNBA. She won 3 gold medals and 2 bronze medals at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia, but was later stripped of the titles after admitting to steroid use.

Jones did retain her 3 Gold Medals as a World Champion from 1997 and 1999.

At the time of her admission and subsequent guilty plea, Marion Jones was one of the most famous athletes to be linked to the BALCO scandal. The case against BALCO covered more than 20 top level athletes including Jones' ex-husband shot putter C.J. Hunter and 100 m sprinter Tim Montgomery, the father of Jones' first child.

Personal life

Jones was born to African-American George Jones and his Belizean wife, Marion, in Los Angeles, California. She holds dual citizenship with the United States and Belize (her mother's home country). Her parents split when she was very young, and Jones' mother remarried a retired postal worker, Ira Toler, three years later. Toler became a stay-at-home dad to Jones and her older half-brother, Albert Kelly, until his sudden death in 1987. Jones turned to sports (running, pickup basketball games, and anything else her brother Albert was doing athletically) as an outlet for her grief, and by the age of 15 she was routinely dominating California high school athletics both on the tracks and the basketball courts.

Marion Jones Farquhar

Marion Jones Farquhar (November 2, 1879 – March 14, 1965) was an American tennis player. She won the women's singles titles at the 1899 and 1902 U.S. Championships. She was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2006.

Biography

Jones was the daughter of Nevada Senator John Percival Jones, co-founder of the town of Santa Monica, and Georgina Frances Sullivan.

Marion Jones was the first Californian to reach the finals at the women’s U.S. Tennis Championships in 1898. She won the U.S. women’s tennis title in 1899 and 1902, and the U.S. mixed doubles title in 1901. At the 1900 Summer Olympics, she was the first American woman to win an Olympic medal. Her sister, Georgina also competed in the 1900 Olympic tennis events. In 1900, Marion Jones was the first non-British woman to play at Wimbledon.

She married architect Robert D. Farquhar in New York City, in 1903. They had three children: David Farquhar (1904 – ), John Percival Farquhar (1912 – ) and Colin Farquhar (1913 – ). From 1920 until 1961, Marion Jones Farquhar lived in Greenwich Village, where she was well known as a violinist and voice coach. She also translated opera librettos and for a short time was head of the New York Chamber Opera. In 1961 she moved back to Los Angeles, where she lived until her death.