U.S. Sprinters Suspended Over Doping

LAUSANNE, Switzerland – Tim Montgomery was suspended for two years for doping Tuesday, and the 100-meter world record he once held was wiped from the books.

Another U.S. sprinter implicated in the BALCO scandal, two-time Olympic relay medalist Chryste Gaines, also received a two-year ban from the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Neither runner tested positive for drugs. The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency sought the bans based on evidence gathered in the criminal investigation of Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative.

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USADA had requested four-year suspensions for both sprinters. But CAS, the highest court in sports, cut the penalty in half.

The bans began retroactively on June 6, 2005. In addition, all Montgomery's results and prize money since March 31, 2001, and Gaines' performances since Nov. 30, 2003, were nullified.

That means Montgomery's former world 100-meter record is erased. He ran 9.79 seconds in Paris in September 2002. The record has since been broken by Jamaica's Asafa Powell, who ran 9.78 on June 14 in Athens, Greece.

CAS said it partly based its ruling on testimony by Kelli White, a former world sprint champion who was suspended for two years in 2004 in the BALCO case. White testified that Montgomery and Gaines admitted to her that they used a prohibited substance provided by the lab.

"The panel unanimously found that Ms. White's testimony was both credible and sufficient to establish that the athletes had indeed admitted to have used prohibited substances in violation of applicable anti-doping rules," CAS said.

The panel said Montgomery and Gaines declined to testify at their hearings.

USADA can ban athletes without a positive doping test if there is other sufficient "analytical" evidence. The agency reviewed thousands of documents seized by federal investigators looking into the BALCO case.

The San Jose Mercury News published details last year of a plan Montgomery and BALCO founder Victor Conte came up with in 2000 to turn him into the world's fastest man. The plan — "Project World Record" — allegedly called for Montgomery to take THG, the previously undetectable steroid at the heart of the BALCO case.

Montgomery and Gaines were among dozens of athletes who testified in 2003 before a federal grand jury in San Francisco investigating BALCO.

Montgomery testified that in 2001 Conte gave him weekly doses of human growth hormone and a substance called the "clear," the San Francisco Chronicle reported in June 2004. That substance was later unmasked as TGH.

Last month, Conte began a four-month prison sentence in California for orchestrating an illegal steroids distribution scheme.

Montgomery is the boyfriend of Marion Jones, a former three-time Olympic champion. She has been under investigation by USADA, but has not been charged.

Former world champion sprinter Michelle Collins, who never tested positive, accepted a four-year suspension in May for using banned substances provided by BALCO. She was stripped of her titles in the 200 from the 2003 world indoor and U.S. championships.