Marion Jones, left, is shown with talk-show host Oprah Winfrey in Chicago on Wednesday. (AP Photo/Harpo Productions, George Burns)

Disgraced track star Marion Jones often thinks she would have won gold medals at the 2000 Sydney Olympics without taking steroids.

She described on Wednesday how she lied to prosecutors when she denied taking the designer steroid THG (known as "the clear").

"I'll ask myself, 'Well, if you hadn't been given "the clear" do you think you would've won?"' Jones said on an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show broadcast Wednesday.

"I usually answer, 'Yes."'

Jones gave her first interview since being released from a Texas federal prison on Sept. 5, where she served time for lying about her use of performance-enhancing drugs.

"I made the decision I was going to lie and try to cover it up," Jones said. "I knew that all of my performances would be questioned."

Although Jones said that lying to prosecutors was a mistake, she maintains that she thought the substance she was taking was flaxseed oil.

"When I stepped on that track, I thought everybody was drug-free, including myself," Jones said. "I apologize for having to put everybody through all of this.

"I'm trying to move on. I hope that everybody else can move on, too."

During the interview, she said she will never compete again, but that she wants to get on with her life and help young people make the right choices.

"I don't have athletics anymore to hide behind," Jones said. "In the past, it was Marion Jones, the athlete .… I don't have that cover anymore. I have really had to find out who I am and why I make certain choices."

Jones admitted in federal court last year to using steroids. She was stripped of five medals she won at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, three of them gold.

She told Winfrey that her sentence and losing her medals was fair.

Her American relay teammates from the Sydney Olympics have filed an appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport in a bid to retain their medals. The International Olympic Committee disqualified them while acknowledging they did not break any rules.

With files from the Associated Press