But the American sprinter who served six months in prison after she was also found guilty of misleading investigators about a bank fraud case involving her former boyfriend and the father of her five-year-old son, former 100 metres world record holder Tim Montgomery, continued to insist that she had never knowingly taken the drugs.

 

Jones, who won five medals at the Sydney Olympics in 2000, including three gold, opened her heart on the Oprah show, one of the most influential shows in the United States.

 

She said: "Never knowingly did I take performance enhancing drugs."

 

But Jones then admitted that when FBI investigators showed her a sample of Tetrahydrogestrinone (THG), also known as the "clear" and the drug taken by Britain's Dwain Chambers, she realised she had taken it.

 

She said: "I knew that I had taken that substance, I made the decision that I was gonna lie and I was gonna, you know, try and cover it up."

 

Jones admitted that the drug given to her by her then coach Trevor Graham had a beneficial effect.

 

She said there were "moments when I felt I had more energy on the track ... that second wind" and times in training "when I felt really good."

 

But she ascribed that to hard training, the supplements she was taking and the fact that she expected to feel that way in an Olympic year.

 

Jones said: "Nothing felt different.

 

"I felt strong, I felt powerful."

 

Jones, now 33, claimed she would have been just as successful without having taken the drug.

 

She said: "Usually I answer yes.

 

"I still think I would have won."

 

Jones has had to return the five medals she won in Sydney, which the International Olympic Committee (IOC) still have to re-allocate.

 

She said: "It wasn't as difficult to give back the medals because it's not about the hardware, it's the memories that are tarnished."

 

Jones wept while reading from a letter she wrote to her children while in jail, telling them "this place where your mommy has to live for six months is called prison."

 

She said missing their birthdays while in prison and being away from them and her husband and father of her one-year-old, Olympic sprinter Obadele Thompson, was the hardest part about being incarcerated.

 

Jones said: "I truly believe that the reason I made the awful mistake and a few thereafter was because I didn't love myself enough to tell the truth."

 

Graham, the coach who blew the whistle on THG when he annonymously sent a sample to drugs testers, was last week sentenced to six months house arrest for lying to the FBI over his role in supplying banned substances to athletes.