6 months in jail for Marion

In Sydney, Jones romped to victory in the 100 and 200 and won bronze in the long jump and 4x100 relay. An astonishing third leg in the 4x400 gave the American a third gold. But by then a shadow had fallen over Sydney after Hunter admitted he had tested positive for nandrolone four times in 1999.

Jones stood expressionless beside her man at a packed news conference. So too did Cochrane and former jazz musician Victor Conte, who explained he was Hunter’s nutritionist and said the positive tests must have been the result of a contaminated iron supplement. Conte was head of the BALCO laboratory.

In 2002 she found a new partner in Tim Montgomery, who broke the world 100 record in Paris and became the first man to run faster than Ben Johnson, whose gold medal and world record at the 1988 Seoul Olympics were stripped after a positive test.

Jones did not compete at the 2003 Paris world championships after becoming pregnant and, as the clouds of suspicion thickened, she did not win a medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

• Born on October 12, 1975, in Los Angeles and grew up in Southern California.

Won gold in the 100m, 200m and 4x400m relay at the 2000 Sydney Olympics and took bronze in the long jump and 4x100 relay, becoming the first woman to win five track and field medals in a single Olympics

•Jones was long been tied to BALCO, the San Francisco-based nutritional supplement company at the heart of a US sports steroid scandal

•Jones had never failed a drug test until 2006 when traces of the banned substance erythropoietin (EPO) were found. She was cleared when a backup test proved negative

• The International Olympic Committee in December officially stripped Jones of her five Sydney medals after she admitted in October to using performance-enhancing drugs