Best of 2000s: Marion Jones a most controversial figure

Join Universal Sports as we ring in the new year and new decade with a look back at the best athletes and top sports stories of the past 10 years. The most controversial story of the decade surrounded Marion Jones, whose admission to steroid use led to an unprecedented fall from grace and had a ripple effect on sports far beyond track and field.

By Alan Abrahamson, Universal Sports | Posted: Dec 28, 4:49a ET | Updated: Dec 28, 4:49a ET

As far as news conferences go, it was then and remains to this day one of the weirdest, strangest, did-that-really-just-happen experiences in sports.
 
This was at the Sydney Olympics in 2000. It was the last week of September, the Games in their second and final week. Reporters from around the world had squeezed into a hotel to see the American shotputter C.J. Hunter hold forth. Hunter is a big man. He was in tears. He was saying he had never knowingly taken performance-enhancing drugs.  
 
Someone who identified himself as Hunter's "nutritionst" said there must have been "quality-control problems" in the calcium and iron supplements Hunter was taking. A "nutritionist"? What?