Drugs cheat Jones set free

DISGRACED sprinter Marion Jones was released from prison yesterday after completing most of her six-month sentence for lying about her steroid use. Jones left a halfway house in San Antonio around 8am, said LaTanya Robinson, a community corrections manager for the federal Bureau of Prisons. Jones, who has a house in Austin, will remain on probation.

The sprinter admitted last October that she used a designer steroid known as "the clear" from September 2000 to July 2001. The drug was linked to the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, the lab that became the centre of a doping scandal that touched numerous athletes, including baseball star Barry Bonds. Her admission of drug use in 2007 came after years of denials.

Jones gave back the three gold medals and two bronze medals she won at the 2000 Sydney Olympics before the International Olympic Committee officially wiped her name from the record books in December.

Meanwhile, it emerged yesterday that the Belarussian silver and bronze medallists in the men's hammer throw at the Beijing Olympics, Vadim Devyatovskiy and Ivan Tsikhan, have tested positive for doping and will be suspended.