{"id":11548125,"date":"2025-07-08T18:24:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-08T22:24:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.baltimoresun.com\/?p=11548125&preview=true&preview_id=11548125"},"modified":"2025-07-08T18:27:29","modified_gmt":"2025-07-08T22:27:29","slug":"lolo-jones-olympic-training-center-ban-rescinded","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.baltimoresun.com\/2025\/07\/08\/lolo-jones-olympic-training-center-ban-rescinded\/","title":{"rendered":"Lolo Jones\u2019 Olympic Training Center ban rescinded"},"content":{"rendered":"

Team USA world champion bobsledder Lolo Jones has been granted access to the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Training Center in Lake Placid, New York, nearly five months after she was banned from the facility following a verbal confrontation with a member of the center\u2019s sports medicine staff after she was denied approved medical treatment, the Southern California News Group has learned.<\/p>\n

An attorney for the USOPC informed Jones, a two-time world champion in both track and field and bobsled, on July 3 that she would have access to housing, the weight room, sports medicine personnel and facilities and training table\/nutrition for a USA Bobsled and Skeleton high performance camp at the OPTC starting July 24 should USABS request access for her, according to USOPC documents obtained by the SCNG.<\/p>\n

The USOPC letter came a day before the deadline to apply for the high performance camp, eight weeks after Jones requested a mediation hearing with the USOPC,\u00a0 and seven months before she hopes to compete in a fourth Olympic Games in Milan-Cortina, according to interviews with five people familiar with the case and USOC and USABS documents obtained by the SCNG.<\/p>\n

Jones\u2019 suspension has continued even though USOPC officials acknowledged she was wrongly denied medical treatment late on the afternoon of Feb. 28, a decision that prompted the verbal confrontation. The USOPC did not interview eyewitnesses, according to Jones, a USABS official, and three other people familiar with the case.<\/p>\n

RELATED:<\/strong> SPECIAL REPORT: Lolo Jones banned from Olympic Training Center<\/a><\/p>\n

Other Olympians, Team USA members and a USA BS official describe the suspension of Jones, 42, as excessive, arbitrary, retaliatory and based on little if any investigation by USOPC officials. The case, Jones and her supporters maintain, also raises serious questions about the medical care America\u2019s Olympic hopefuls are receiving at the OPTC in Lake Placid.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis case is a glaring example of the need for a complete overhaul of the USOPC\u2019s medical system,\u201d said John Manly, Jones\u2019 Orange County-based attorney.<\/p>\n

The suspension and the decision not to lift it, Manly said \u201ccomes from the very top of the Olympic committee which is Sarah Hirschland,\u201d the USOPC\u2019s CEO.<\/p>\n

The USOPC has not responded to multiple requests for comment.<\/p>\n

Manly was especially critical of USOPC board member Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, the former U.S. surgeon general.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe USOPC has made a big deal about how \u2018we care for athletes\u2019 after Nassar,\u201d Manly said. \u201cIn reality nothing has changed. (Murthy) has taken no active role in understanding why the (USOPC) medical system is so bad. Anybody that truly cared about the (USOPC\u2019s) mission, which was enacted by Congress and is to take care of athletes, no competent person would think this is OK.\u201d<\/p>\n

Murthy\u2019s office referred questions to the USOPC.<\/p>\n

Under the USOPC suspension, Jones has been denied access to training facilities such as the center\u2019s weight room, sports medicine clinic and personnel, and housing and nutritional resources at a critical training period, according to USOPC documents obtained by the SCNG and interviews with Jones and four other people familiar with the case. The suspension has created competitive, financial and emotional obstacles, Jones said, that jeopardize her bid to compete in what would be her second Winter Olympics and fourth overall. The former LSU track and field star competed in the 100-meter hurdles at the 2008 and 2012 Summer Olympics.<\/p>\n

Jones has spent approximately $100,000 on medical and training expenses because of the suspension, Manly said. Jones has been training at LSU, where she was an NCAA hurdles champion, since the ban.<\/p>\n

The two-time World champion in bobsled, suffering severe pain and incontinence from a training-related back injury, was initially banned from the OPTC sports medicine area March 1, a day after she called John Faltus, a top official at the USOPC Medical Clinic at the training center, \u201ca horrible f\u2014\u2014 human being,\u201d during a verbal exchange after a previously scheduled treatment was canceled without explanation just days before the World Championships in Lake Placid, according to OPTC emails and interviews. Jones confirmed in an interview with SCNG that she swore at Faltus.<\/p>\n

Faltus also alleges that Jones made an obscene gesture toward him, an allegation Jones denies.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis behavior is a direct violation of the OPTC Code of Conduct,\u201d Julie Marra, director of the USOPC Training Center in Lake Placid, wrote in a March 1 email to Jones. \u201cThis conduct is unacceptable, and I want to make it clear that such behavior cannot be tolerated.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Marra did not cite a specific violation of the code in the email or subsequently, according to documents and five people familiar with the case. The closest the code comes to directly addressing swearing or verbal altercations is one brief passage: \u201cUnacceptable behavior will not be tolerated, including but not limited to, the following: Any act of violation of offenses, as listed in the USOPC Background Check Policy or adjudicated of federal, state, or local laws.\u201d<\/p>\n

The OPTC code, a USABS official acknowledged, \u201cis arbitrary.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTo this day,\u201d Jones wrote in an email to SCNG, \u201cno one has told me: Who found me in violation, what exact rule or code I broke, or what part of the Code of Conduct was allegedly violated.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marra and Faltus have not responded to multiple requests for comment.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we banned every Olympic athlete that dropped an F-bomb we\u2019d be in big trouble,\u201d Manly said.<\/p>\n

Ben Towne, the OPTC trainer, set up an appointment with the sports medicine clinic for Jones to receive a massage, the first step in treating and diagnosing the back injury, according OPTC protocol. But Jones was informed after arriving at the clinic Feb. 28 that her appointment had been canceled without explanation.<\/p>\n

Towne will be Jones\u2019 point of contact with the OPTC sports medicine clinic beginning July 24.<\/p>\n

Although Jones was told Faltus canceled the treatment because she was only entitled to one massage per week and she had already had a massage that week, she said: \u201cI have never received a written explanation for why I was denied medical treatment? This is especially alarming given that I was recovering from an injury I sustained while representing Team USA. The USOPC claims to support athlete health, but in this case, they failed to uphold that duty of care.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOne massage a week for 50 minutes for one of our top Olympians,\u201d Manly said. \u201cIf you get hurt in prison, you get an MRI. The medical system in the federal prison system is literally better than the USOPC\u2019s. What are we doing?<\/p>\n

\u201cPrisoners get better treatment than Olympians?\u201d<\/p>\n

Jones paid to have an MRI done after the World Championships, which revealed a herniated disc with a disc bulge, and tears in her L3, L4 and L5 vertebrae with spinal fluid leaking out.<\/p>\n