For more than a century, the U.S. sprint corps has owned their Olympic events like no other team has dominated its disciplines. But victory doesn’t always bring vindication, and American sprinters are finding out the hard way that it’s a lot easier to outrun athletes than it is allegations and indictments.
The Olympic trials are approaching next month, but not until after a trial of less repute but near equal importance.
Disgraced track coach Trevor Graham goes on trial May 19 for lying to federal investigators, finally bringing the BALCO doping scandal full circle from baseball back to where it started.
Evidence presented by both the defense and prosecution is expected to link a dirty dozen of track stars to performance-enhancing drugs, with arguably the biggest name on the list Maurice Green, a two-time Olympic gold medalist who didn’t train with Graham and never tested positive in his career.
Years before Barry Bonds faced a grand jury, Victor Conte founded BALCO, designing Tetrahydrogestrinone (THG; the Clear) and Graham supplied it to track’s biggest stars. That is, until Pandora’s Box opened in 2003 when the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency got a syringe containing traces of THG.
Known supplier Angel Guillermo Heredia is expected to be a witness at Graham’s trial, providing documentary evidence on a dozen more stars. After a scandal with more twists than a Robert Ludlum tale, track is mired in doubt, disillusionment and distrust even among its own athletes.
“I don’t have an idol in this sport because there’s a lot of shaky things going on,” said LaShawn Merritt, second in last year’s World Championship 400 at 43.96 seconds. “Sometimes I line up beside somebody, I know something’s up.
“You just hope everybody’s playing it clean; and if they’re not, they get caught so everything’s equal. It’s unfair if a person in this lane’s taking drugs and the guy beside him isn’t. I feel like every time I line up the field may not be right.”
Sadly, it’s not paranoia if they really are out to cheat you. Marion Jones was stripped of three Olympic gold medals and is serving jail time, Inmate 84868-054. Tim Montgomery, the father of Jones’ child, and Brooklyn-born Justin Gatlin both have been banned and stripped of their 100-meter world records.
And nobody cheats in a vacuum.
Jones’ 2000 Olympic relay partners were ordered to hand in their medals because of her cheating, although seven of them, including 4×400 winners Jearl-Miles Clark, Monique Hennagan, LaTasha Colander-Richardson and Andrea Anderson, appealed with the Court of Arbitration for Sport today.
With all the bad publicity, the spotlight will be white-hot on U.S. stars Merritt, Allyson Felix, Lauryn Williams, Jeremy Wariner and Sanya Richards (fiancée of Giants DB Aaron Ross). None are older than 25, but are shouldering the burden of not just making a name for themselves, but cleaning up the one their sport ruined.
“I don’t envy today’s athlete,” said Renaldo Nehemiah, former 110 hurdles record holder, now an agent. “It’s tough, because no matter who does anything, there’s someone saying, ‘I wonder if that was a legitimate performance.’ “
Nehemiah, a Scotch Plains (N.J.) native, has represented Gatlin and Felix, and as one client is at the center of the scandal, the other is at the forefront a hopeful solution.
Felix, 22, the daughter of an ordained minister, is everything track needs. She’s young and bright (graduating from USC on May 16), telegenic and talented (the second woman to win three titles at one World Championship).
She idolized Jones, and was crestfallen at her fellow Californian’s cheating. So when USADA CEO Travis Tygart asked her to take part in Project Believe, a program to improve the accuracy of doping tests and provide baseline body chemistry figures for athletes, she jumped at the chance.
“We want to do as much as we can to take a stand against doping, so I think this program was the perfect thing, especially given the climate of the sport right now,” said Felix, who drives 30 miles to undergo voluntary twice-weekly tests in a lab, including two urine samples and five vials of blood.
“We’re not required to do it, but it’s important to us and to the sport. We want to do as much as we can in the fight against doping.”
Nehemiah said track is in such a deep morass even more is needed to pull it out.
“She feels ‘If that’s what I need to do — not just for myself but the sport — then I’ll do it,’ because so many people she’s aspired to be like have betrayed her confidence, and the spirit of the sport,” Nehemiah said of Felix, whose 21.81 at the World Championship was the fastest 200 this century.
“I think it should be mandated. Our sport is in a crisis management. I applaud the project. We’re at critical mass here. Every two months somebody’s discovered to have done something. If you really love this sport, you should feel obligated (to do it).”