The American Association of Throwing Coaches announced on Monday the death of the American shot putter Cottrell Jacks Hunter, 1999 world champion in Seville, a few days before his 53rd birthday, on December 14.
Unless you're keen on athletics, you don't really know this Penn State University graduate, whose record peaked at 21.86m in 2000, making him the 43rd best specialist of all time in his speciality.
CJ Hunter is especially famous for his tumultuous marriage to Marion Jones, the former queen of the sprint, between 1998 and 2002. The couple met at the University of North Carolina where the beauty was still a basketball player and the beautiful baby coach of to throw.
In accordance with university rules, which prohibit relations between coaches and athletes, he had to leave his post.
Hunter played the role of husband, strong bodyguard and probably also a bad mentor ...
Sad to hear of the passing of 1999 World Shot Champion CJ Hunter.
His personal best was 71 '9 ", (21.87 meters). Just shy of age 53. Way too young. #RIP CJ pic.twitter.com/j5ioL8Dkgk
- National Throws (@nationalthrows) November 29, 2021
He made the news during the Sydney Games (2000), where he was officially forfeited for a meniscus injury, with the announcement of a positive test for nandrolone three months earlier.
The beginning of the Balco scandal (name of the laboratory which supplied doping products to many American athletes) and the end of Marion Jones, deprived a posteriori of her five Australian medals (three gold, two bronze).
After sadly making headlines, he moved to Apex (North Carolina) with his two children, Ahny and Cory, from a previous marriage.
Marion Jones, she was forced to confess in 2007 that she had taken steroids from 1999. The following year, the Californian was sentenced to six months in prison for perjury because she had firmly denied until then any involvement in the Balco matter.
She served her sentence in a Texas prison between March and September 2008. She now lives in Austin (Texas) where she is a personal trainer and remains the third fastest woman in the world in the 200m and the fourth in the 100m. .
