Yo, Marion. It's like this. The Olympics are finally here. Your moment has come. Luckily, all the insinuations and rumors coming from the BALCO case as well as your ex-husband seem to be dying down a bit, at least this week. Your spokespeople have put a pretty good spin on it all. Now is a time for looking ahead, for letting you get on with your work of winning a medal. For the United States. For all of us.

But then every once in a while my vertigo subsides, and I start to think clearly again. How important is that long jump gold medal? Are you really trying to win it for us? Is it important enough to take the chance at further dragging the sport through the mud? I don't think I'm dramatizing things when I assert that whatever happens in Athens, a gold or a last place finish, doesn't matter much to the United States. But this continuing drug scandal does matter quite a bit. It means everything to the future health of Olympic sport in this country.

Your brave-stubborn-heroic-whatever insistence that you are innocent just isn't good enough right now. You may have convinced many of your fans, but as I said, that's just not good enough.

C.J. Hunter says he helped you take drugs during your five medal-winning binge at the Sydney Olympics. Your response? He has no credibility. After all, he's the drug user you divorced.

Your lawyers have correctly advised you that you could come out of this looking like a victim if you went on the attack. So you called USADA a "kangaroo court" and you called your ex-husband a liar and you fled stadiums accusing the media of picking on you. It worked in Sacramento at the Olympic Trials. The fans cheered loudly for poor Marion.

Slide show   Visions of gold: Aug. 29 Demark throws for handball gold, Argentina takes it to the net and Britain's Mark Lewis-Francis jumps for joy.

Through this all, you have asked us to simply believe you. In this world full of liars — including everyone who you say is after you — you have portrayed yourself as a beacon of truth.
Personally, I'd love to go along with that. But there have been too many issues raised, too many associations with people involved with doping, from your marriage to C.J. to your having a child with Tim Montgomery (who reportedly confessed drug use to a grand jury) to working with Charlie Francis (ex-Ben Johnson coach) and Trevor Graham (coach of at least six athletes accused of doping).

Everyone deserves a chance, Marion, and so do you. When you suggested Hunter take a lie-detector test, the solution suddenly came clear to me.

Here's the deal, Marion. Forget the private lie detector test you say you took. Take a public lie detector test, not something hidden away with no impartial witnesses. Public. If you like, we can keep it short and restrict it to one question: "have you ever taken a banned substance?" If you pass, let's drop the whole thing and cheer wildly for you in the Olympics.

If you fail, publicly apologize to your fans, retire from the sport, and go sell real estate with Regina Jacobs. Because frankly, this has gone on too long and gotten too ugly. No one needs this. And these days it is presumptuous and selfish for a top athlete to ask fans and officials alike to presume innocence when serious accusations have been made.

Whatever happened to "innocent until proven guilty"? While I like it as a standard for death penalty cases and such, I find myself souring on it in the sports world. This might have something to do with the fact that the U.S. may be losing two sets of relay gold medals because we presumed that Jerome Young and Calvin Harrison were innocent. We were so anxious to avoid unfairly punishing them for their drug test results that now we are unfairly punishing all the innocent guys who shared a baton with them at the 2000 Olympics and the 2003 World Championships.

Marion, that's why I wonder why the U.S. coaches let you carry the baton for the national team at a recent meet in Munich. Could they possibly be contemplating an Olympic relay run for you? Only greed for medals could explain that, but it would perhaps not be the wisest move, even if you are our only chance for gold.

Make it easy on all of us, Marion. We want to cheer for you. Just take a public lie detector test. You may think I'm asking a lot. Well I think you're asking a lot. You shouldn't put the public in a position where we have to presume anything about you. You need to prove that you're clean, instead of daring the prosecutors to come after you.

You alone are in a position to end this mess quickly. Maybe it won't serve your personal interests, but it will be best for the Olympics and the future of the sport.

Take the test.

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