Marion Jones

At the pinnacle of her success, Olympic sprinter Marion Jones set records for female athletes, signed multimillion-dollar endorsement deals and adorned the covers of national magazines.

But seven summers after her dominance of the Sydney Games, where she won a women’s record five medals — three of them gold — Jones has disappeared from track and field. Her days of competitive glory have given way to suspicions of performance-enhancing drug use.

According to recent court records, Jones says that her millions of dollars are gone and that she has “total liquid assets throughout the world” of about $2,000.

Last year, she said, a bank foreclosed on her $2.5-million chateau-style ‘dream home’ in an area of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where Michael Jordan and Dean Smith were among her neighbours.

And this year, records show, Jones sold two other North Carolina houses, including one where her mother lived, raising ‘money to pay bills,’ she said.

Jones conceded having no financial recovery plan but also said she wasn’t worried. “I pray that God will bless me and my needs will be taken care of,” she testified in a deposition.

The dismal state of her financial health is described by Jones in a 168-page deposition, part of a breach-of-contract suit she filed in Dallas against veteran track coach Dan Pfaff.

Unfortunately for Jones, Pfaff countersued and won a judgement for about $240,000 in unpaid training fees and legal expenses.

“You made some good money. Where did that money go?” asked a sceptical Pfaff attorney, Eric Little.

“Who knows? I wish I knew. Bills, attorney bills, a lot of different things to maintain the lifestyle,” Jones said.

In fact, legal bills have been a growing burden on Jones’ finances. She has been involved in a rash of litigation since 2003, when she was linked to the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO) after a federal raid.

Jones has since retained attorneys for her BALCO grand jury testimony, for negotiations with the US Anti-Doping Agency in her fight to avoid being banned from competition, for a defamation lawsuit she filed against BALCO founder Victor Conte, who accused her of taking performance-enhancing drugs, and for taking on Pfaff in her breach-of-contract suit.

That suit had the added side effect of exposing her financial problems to public view. Exactly how much those legal bills have cost her is unknown.

Suspicions of drug use flared again last year when a Jones urine sample — taken during the US Track and Field Championships in June 2006 — later tested positive for the performance-enhancing drug erythropoietin.

Upon receiving the news, Jones immediately quit a European track tour and returned to the US. Although she was cleared when a backup sample tested negative, she missed at least five major international meets — forfeiting an estimated $300,000 in appearance and performance fees.

Jones became one of track’s first female millionaires during her prime, typically earning between $70,000 and $80,000 a race, plus at least another $1 million from race bonuses and endorsement deals.

In 2000-01, she competed in 21 international events, including the Olympics and US Olympic trials, according to statistics of IAAF, track’s world governing body.

Since those heady days, however, Jones’ career has been dogged by outbreaks of bad publicity. Besides the dark cloud of doping suspicions, she has had boyfriends, agents and coaches land in trouble — including charges of fraud and lying to federal agents.

Attorneys for Pfaff contend that the highly regarded trainer was hired by Jones to improve her reputation. “I’ve always thought she was using coach Pfaff … as a beard,” Edmund ‘Skip’ Davis, one of the lawyers, said in a telephone interview.

Today, Jones, 31, lives in Austin, Texas, with her new husband, Obadele Thompson of Barbados, an Olympic bronze medallist in the 100m in 2000.

The couple live in a home with an assessed value of $206,792, according to Travis County property records. The residence, on a 6,000-square-foot lot, is recorded in Thompson’s name.

Steve Riddick, Jones’ most recent coach, said Jones has complained to him that a few track meets had failed to pay her last year, but the coach said he also noticed Jones was driving a Porsche sport utility vehicle to their 2006 practices. “I didn’t see any signs that she was struggling,” Riddick said.

The coach said he asked Jones this week if she intended to race again. “She hasn’t decided, but I anticipate she’ll want to get ready for the Olympic Games one more time,” Riddick said.