Marion's teammates should probably return their medals. It's a tough question ethically but central to cracking down on drugs in sport.

A team contract for relays where they are all members must legally sign they are drug-free would be an interesting initiative as the rare person would want to letdown teammates. Of course you also need an incentive to make it work such as a trust-fund for the winnings if 10 yrs later all are still clean.

Yeah - let's go back to trust funds, at least then Marion would not have gone bankrupt.

Maybe the original conversation between Marion Jones and her alter ego went something like...

MARION: Cheating is wrong. It's simply wrong.

EGGINGON: Yeah, but think of all that money. If you can get an edge, why not take it?

MARION: It's cheating, no matter how you cut it.

EGGINGON: Plenty of athletes are doing it. You have to know that. Maybe they're getting an unfair advantage on you.

MARION: Hmmmm! I'm pretty sure there are others using stuff.

EGGINGON: You can bet on it. You're the one who's been playing it straight. And you know they're all out to get you -- you.

MARION: That's for sure. But what if I get caught?

EGGINGON: Deny! Deny! Deny! Deny it often enough, and it'll simply go away.

MARION: I guess you're right.

WRONG!

Josh, I enjoyed reading your unique debate. Emotions always make it difficult. We all can relate to the teammates and their disappointment. Nevertheless, the medals were not earned fairly making it clear that the team must be disqualified.

It is time for the athletic world to stand up and work toward a cleaner environment. Instead of questioning whether great athletes are for real, I would love to admire great ones again.

It seems to be the most important thing isn't that her teammates give up the medals but what about awarding the other teams the correct medals? The team that should have gold, silver, and bronze? The focus should be on the positive. Instead we are condemning three athletes that did no wrong. Their team was tainted by an individual and she gave back her medals but why not be concerned about the true winners. Is it not insulting enough to have your records stricken from history that you basically didn't even exist. Years of hard work and training to be just simply erased because a member of the relay (unknown to you) took a performance enhancer in a sport that is truly an individual sport. It is not really a team in the truest sense. This is not a group that has to train together and perform together all year to compete in the event. In fact it could be different in each round. Do they need to be dragged through the mud more than they already have? Why not celebrate the parties wronged? Instead we as a society only get a thrill out of watching others suffer. Look at it this way…there is a positive coming out of this, the system worked. A cheat was caught, medals were returned, the rightful winners are known and hopefully a message is sent to other athletes that you can and will get caught if using performance enhancers. Why make it worse?

Something also to look at, what if Barry Bonds is found to be using steroids? Do you go back and erase the wins he played in? Do you take away RBIs for the guy who batted him for every time they walked Barry? How much is enough? And that is a real team sport not like a relay team. My point is you could keep this craziness going on forever. Punish the cheat and move on.

I must admit, this came off much better than T.I. vs. T.I.P

One sticky element with elevating other place finishers is that, in at least one case, the silver medalist has been implicated with performance-enhancing drugs. It's all a colossal mess that leaves you wondering where it will all end. The real damage here is to subsequent generations of athletes who come to accept that the only way to compete at the elite level is to use drugs. I hope that testing soon becomes more affordable and more effective so that this terrible trend can be stopped.

Interesting article - For me, whether her teammates got robbed doesn't at all hold my interest. When this story broke my immediate questioning began with why now, what does telling the truth at this point in time contribute?

My next reaction was about the medals. Giving them back surely punishes Marion Jones, but what about the silver and bronze medalists, or the non-medaling fourth-place individual? Should they not get awarded a new medal? Should Marion’s medals not be redistributed?

JM commented that "enough is enough...punish and move on"...but how can you move on when the only thing that Marion Jones has done by coming forward with the truth seven years later, has once again been only for herself (now she can forgive and forget).

In my mind, enough is not enough until the punishment of a situation leads to the righting of a wrong. Punishment should not be solely about retribution and dissuasion. Stripping Marion Jones of her medals only continues to feed into her egocentric world by providing her with a sense of amnesty.

In reality, medal or no medal, Marion Jones still holds the titles those medals belonged with. Until the true deserving individuals are awarded their justified gold, silver, and bronze medals, Marion Jones will have forever tarnished those races, and left an indelible mark on the 2000 Olympics, the USA, and hopefully on her soul.

Question: had Marion Jones decided to run outside of her lane to reduce the distance the team had to run, would the entire team have been disqualified even though three of them ran a clean race? Answer: of course. So why should Marion cheating by using performance enhancing substances be handled differently?