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Seven American Athletes Flunked Drug Tests


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The continuing saga. Enjoy the news story.   :)  :)  :)

Judge Rejects USADA's Bid to Read BALCO Testimony

Anti-Doping Agency Had Wanted to Review Sprinters' Statements

By DAVID KRAVETS, AP SPORTS

SAN FRANCISCO (July 9) -- A federal judge on Friday rejected the U.S. Olympic anti-doping agency's bid to review sealed testimony of top sprinters questioned during a federal probe into an alleged steroid ring.

 

The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency wants to review the grand jury testimony of Tim Montgomery, Chryste Gaines, Michelle Collins and Alvin Harrison -- all charged by the agency with using performance-enhancing drugs.

All four sprinters appeared last fall before a federal grand jury investigating the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative. Each has denied using banned substances.

BALCO's founder and three other men connected to the lab were indicted for allegedly distributing illegal steroids. All four men have pleaded innocent.

The USADA request came as the four athletes were set to begin competing in the U.S. Olympic track and field trials in Sacramento, which last through next weekend. The USADA is trying to prevent them from participating in the Olympics if they have admitted using steroids.

"Did these people take these substances or didn't they?" Bob Vizas, a USADA attorney told U.S. District Judge Susan Illston in explaining why the agency wants the transcripts. "We want to see the right people compete in the Olympics."

The judge agreed with the government that USADA failed to provide an adequate legal basis to gain access to the sealed testimony. By law, such testimony usually remains sealed unless it is admitted as evidence in a case generated by the grand jury indictment.

Federal prosecutor Carter Stewart told the judge that, sometimes, grand jury transcripts can be released to investigative bodies unaffiliated with the Justice Department -- if the testimony involves police officers, attorneys or judges who are under investigation.

Stewart said USADA's request was made with "good reason," but added, "good reasons are not enough."

He said the Justice Department believed that aiding USADA would "undercut the ability of witnesses to come into these grand jury proceedings and testify truthfully."

The four sprinters were among the dozens of athletes who testified before the BALCO grand jury, which indicted BALCO's founder, Victor Conte; vice president James Valente; track coach Remi Korchemny; and Greg Anderson, the trainer for San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds.

Trial is pending.

07/09/04 15:52 EDT

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I know this story talks about Gail Devers in the begining, but from the middle on, its a very interesting comment about past gold medal winners who may have used illegal performance drugs. if they want to strip 2000 4x400 relay team of there medal, then maybe we should go back and correct all the other injustice that have incurred in past Olympics. Enjoy the article.

Decision looms for Devers as Edwards faces ban

By STEVE WILSTEIN

.c The Associated Press

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - Her curly, 3-inch fingernails painted gold and her patter as breathless as her pace on the track, Gail Devers is headed for her fifth Olympics.

Once, in her early 20s, she was days away from having her feet amputated because of Graves disease. Now Devers is 37, taking her last shot at the one gold that has eluded her in an event that has defined her career and, metaphorically, her life - the hurdles.

``I'm ecstatic. I feel blessed,'' Devers said as the U.S. Olympic track and field trials ended on a 110-degree Sunday that was a fitting preview of the searing heat expected in Athens. ``I've been there, done that before, but each time is like a new experience for me. I try to look at it as if it's my first time going to the Olympic Games.''

Maybe this time she will clear those hurdles cleanly, run the perfect race she has pursued so long and missed heartbreakingly on the biggest occasions. Three world championships in the 100-meter hurdles tell her she can do it, no matter the date on her birth certificate.

``If you had asked me in 1988 how long I would be here, I would have told you I thought I was done in '88,'' she said. ``The key to it for me, for all these years, is still having fun. The challenge for me has been coaching myself. You have to look for challenges to keep yourself motivated.''

From Seoul to Barcelona to Atlanta, Sydney and now Athens, this devoutly religious daughter of a Baptist preacher has been a burst of sunshine in a sport too often consumed by the darkness of doping. She embraces the roles of ambassador of track and big sister to the budding young stars who surround her on the U.S. team.

By chance, a doping case might give Devers the opportunity to race again in the 100 sprint, which she won in 1992 and '96. She finished fourth in the trials behind Torri Edwards, who faces a two-year ban if found guilty of using a banned stimulant.

Edwards takes her case to an arbitration panel Monday but the odds of her winning are poor. She may very well have taken the stimulant inadvertently, as she says, as an additive in a glucose mixture her doctor gave her in Martinique in April. But the bottom line, as the World Anti-Doping Agency keeps telling athletes, is they are responsible for anything found in their body.

If Devers is the beneficiary of Edwards' blunder and chooses to run in the 100, she would have to compete five days in a row. That could compromise her chances to win, finally, in the 100 hurdles.

``I've never made a hasty decision,'' Devers said. ``I'm not going to start.''

She said she will do what she always does when she has to make a big decision: pray.

If Devers passes on the 100, it would open up a spot in the race for Marion Jones, the defending Olympic champion who finished fifth in the trials. That would be one more twist in the never-ending doping stories of the games, because Jones is under scrutiny by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency because of her links to the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, accused dopester and boyfriend Tim Montgomery and former husband C.J. Hunter, who was banned for using a steroid.

These are grim days in the sport. Fairness is a slippery commodity and athletes with integrity, like Devers, are too few.

Track and field's governing body recommended Sunday that the U.S. 1,600-meter relay team, led by Michael Johnson, be stripped of its gold medal from the Sydney Olympics as part of Jerome Young's doping case.

The International Olympic Committee is expected to endorse the recommendation. USA Track & Field said it ``regrets'' the decision and will try to fight it.

The recommendation came 2 1/2 weeks after the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled Young, the 400 world champion who ran in the relay's opening and semifinal rounds, should be stripped of his gold because of a positive test for the steroid nandrolone on June 26, 1999.

Young, who has denied taking a prohibited substance, was exonerated by a USATF doping appeals board on July 10, 2000.

If the whole U.S. 1,600-relay team is punished, the IOC ought to start looking deeper into Olympic history and correct more blatant injustices. Open up the whole rotten Pandora's box.

Go back to 1976 and give American swimmer Shirley Babashoff the golds she was denied when she finished behind East Germans pumped up on steroids. Take a look at the East German marathoner who came out of nowhere to beat Frank Shorter. Examine the medical records and interview the East German women with bulging muscles and husky voices who won golds in 1988.

When the Berlin Wall fell, the East German sports secrets started leaking out. Manfred Hoppner, the deputy director of East Germany's sports medicine machine, revealed documents that detailed the country's cheating. In 2000, Lothar Kipke, the chief doctor of the East German Swimming Federation from 1975 to 1985, was convicted of causing bodily harm to 58 swimmers with various concoctions.

Does the IOC, so eager to come down hard on the U.S. team, have the guts to probe the seamy side of the Olympics over the past three decades?

Steve Wilstein is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at swilstein(at)ap.org

07/19/04 04:15 EDT

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  • 2 weeks later...

I am so glad that the U.S. is trying to do something about this before the games start.

Hopefully we can avoid the huge embarressment that Canada had with Ben Johnson in '88.   :rolleyes:

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  • 1 year later...
  • 1 month later...
The fate of Tim Montgomery is going to be known today. If guilty, he will be banned for life from track and field. It could also continue on with investigation of other athletes, too, with this matter.
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It gets worse for Montgomery. The IAAF is now going after his assets, "asking" him to give back as much as $1 million US, if he even has that kind of money now:

IAAF After Sprinter Montgomery's Prize Money

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  • 4 months later...
Montgomery does money laundering and bank fraud now. Geez, this guy likes to get colorful, does he?

U.S. Sprinter Tim Montgomery Charged With Fraud

Pleads not guilty:

Sprinter Montgomery Pleads Not Guilty In Fraud Case

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  • 2 weeks later...

Tim may be the slime here, but I wonder how Marion Jones (his former girlfriend) is doing nowadays? Even though this article may be protraying her present scenario as a comeback, I wonder if she is really out of that damaging loop now?

Marion Jones Sprints To Gold

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  • 10 months later...
Pleads not guilty:

Sprinter Montgomery Pleads Not Guilty In Fraud Case</font>

<font color='#000080'>He is such slime :angry:</font>

You want more slime? Believe it or not, he changes his plea.

Link: CBC: Tim Montgomery Pleads Guilty In Fraud Case

montgomery-tim-ap-070409.jpg

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  • 1 year later...

Man, this guy cannot get his face off the spotlight without getting more criminal charges laid against him. :rolleyes:<_<:rolleyes: Now, he is newly charged with heroin possession. How many charges does this guy have now? :o

Link: CBC: One-time track star Montgomery denied bond

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