Alaska's list of Olympic medal winners grew by one Friday.
Former Lathrop High track star Passion Richardson, deemed guilty by association for running on a 2000 Summer Olympics bronze-medal relay team that also included disgraced doper Marion Jones, won an appeal that will restore the medal she had been stripped of three years ago.
Jones, one of the biggest stars to emerge at the Sydney Olympics a decade ago, lost her five medals -- three gold, two bronze -- when she admitted in 2007 that she had used illegal performance-enhancing drugs in Sydney.
When it punished Jones, the International Olympic Committee also punished Richardson and seven other women who ran with Jones on medal-winning relay teams -- gold for the 1,600-meter team and bronze for the 400-meter team. Both teams were disqualified in their entirety, erasing Richardson's status as an Olympic medal winner.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport on Friday ended a long battle by Richardson and others to get their medals back. The court said there was no rule in place in 2000 with either the IOC or the International Association of Athletics Federation -- the world's governing body for track and field -- that allowed for the disqualification of an entire relay team in the event in which one member was caught doping.
"Finally, the fight is over," Richardson told The Associated Press in a phone interview. "It's been a long three years, a long hard fight. I wanted to believe they would do what was right, but there were some times where I wasn't as certain. Today, they did what was right."
Richardson, who was a track phenom as a youngster in Fairbanks, never did surrender her medal to the IOC. She gave it to her parents, in a frame that also includes a USA bib and a photo from Sydney. In a 2008 interview with espn.com, Richardson said she had no intention of taking it from her parents.
"I've had some people say, 'Well, just give it back.' If you went through what we went through to earn it, you're not going to give it back. How do you just give it back, when (Jones) had absolutely no regard for the other people she was competing with?"
Richardson dominated Alaska sprinting for a couple of years in the late 1980s. In 1988, as a 12-year-old, she won the 200-meter national championship at the ARCO Jesse Owens Games in Los Angeles. In 1990, as a 4-foot-11, 96-pound freshman at Lathrop, she set Region III records in the 100 (12.3 seconds) and 200 (25.4). A week later at the state meet, she blew away the competition in the 100 (12.5) and 200 (25.5) and anchored a state-record performance by Lathrop's 800 relay team.
Her family left Fairbanks shortly after Richardson's freshman year when her father, who had been stationed at Fort Wainwright, was transferred to another post. Richardson still owns the 100-meter record (11.31) at the University of Kentucky, where she works as a student affairs officer.
In a statement released Friday, the IOC said it still thinks it made the right decision three years ago, saying the Court of Arbitration's ruling was "disappointing and especially unfortunate for the athletes of the other teams who competed according to the rules."
Richardson and others who participated in the appeal argued they too competed by the rules.
"We did what we were supposed to do and did it with fairness," she told the AP on Friday.
Besides Richardson, medals will be restored to seven other women -- Jearl Miles-Clark, Monique Hennagan, LaTasha Colander Clark and Andrea Anderson, who ran on the gold-medal winning 1,600 team, and Chryste Gaines, Torri Edwards and Nanceen Perry, who joined Jones and Richardson on the 400 team.
Each team had more than four members because the same four runners do not have to run in each heat. Jones was competing in so many events in Sydney that she skipped most of the preliminary heats in the relay races.
Besides losing the gold she won in the 100, 200 and 1,600 relay, and the bronzes she won in the 400 relay and long jump, Jones served almost six months in prison for lying about her use of performance enhancers, as well as for her role in a check-fraud scam. Today, she plays basketball in the WNBA for the Tulsa Shock.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Alaska's Olympic medal winners
1984 Summer Olympics -- Kris Thorsness, gold medal, rowing (Anchorage)
1988 Summer Olympics -- Andrea Lloyd Curry, gold medal, basketball (Juneau)
1992 Winter Olympics -- Hilary Lindh, silver medal, downhill (Juneau)
1994 Winter Olympics -- Tommy Moe, gold medal in downhill, silver medal in super-G (Palmer)
1996 Summer Olympics -- Michele Granger, gold medal, softball (Anchorage)
2000 Summer Olympics -- Passion Richardson, bronze medal, track (Fairbanks)
2004 Summer Olympics -- Matt Emmons, gold medal, riflery (Fairbanks)
2004 Summer Olympics -- Carlos Boozer, bronze medal, basketball (Juneau)
2006 Winter Olympics -- Rosey Fletcher, bronze medal, snowboarding (Girdwood)
2006 Winter Olympics -- Pam Dreyer, bronze medal, hockey (Eagle River)
2008 Summer Olympics -- Carlos Boozer, gold medal, basketball (Juneau)
2008 Summer Olympics -- Matt Emmons, gold medal, riflery (Fairbanks)
2008 Summer Olympics -- Corey Cogdell, bronze medal, trapshooting (Eagle River)
2010 Winter Olympics -- Kerry Weiland, silver medal, hockey (Palmer)
By BETH BRAGG
bbragg@adn.com