This is probably Tim Montgomery’s way of redeeming himself in the eyes of the public.

As he serves his four-year sentence for fraud and conspiracy offenses, the former sprinter admits in an interview with HBO that he took testosterone and human growth hormone prior to the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. Because of the doping infringement, Montgomery says, he does not deserve the gold medal he won in the 400 meter relay.

“I have a gold medal that I’m sitting on that I didn’t get with my own ability,” Montgomery stated in the interview. “I’m not here to take away from anybody else’s accomplishments, only my own. And I must say, I apologize to the other people that was on the relay team if that was to happen.”

Darryl Seibel, spokesman for the US Olympic Committee, has an immediate retort for Montgomery.

“If Tim Montgomery cheated at the games, then he should step forward and voluntarily return his medal, just as others from the 2000 team have done. By using a banned substance, any result he achieved is tainted,” Seibel said to Associated Press.

“He has a responsibility to his sport, to the athletes against whom he competed in Sydney and also to the new generation of track athletes who are doing their best to compete the right way and put problems like this in the past.”

Montgomery’s case has precedents, and they don’t bode well for Jon Drummond, Bernard Williams, Brian Lewis, Maurice Greene and Kenneth Brokenburr – Montgomery’s teammates at the 400 meter relay.

The men’s team which won the 1,600 meter event also at the Sydney Olympics were stripped off their medals when one member, Antonio Pettigrew, confessed to doping. Same thing happened with the U.S. women’s teams also in Sydney when the former sprint queen Marion Jones was implicated in a doping scandal. Jones’ teams, which won the gold in the 1,600 meter and bronze at the 400 meter relay, were disqualified by the International Olympic Committee executive board and were asked to return their medals.

“This is an example of the far-reaching consequences of cheating,” Seibel said. “The integrity of sport must be preserved, even if that means invalidating results and forfeiting medals.”

Jones had served her six-month sentence for lying about her use of anabolic steroids and her role in a check-fraud scheme. She was released from prison facility in Texas on September 5, 2008. Meanwhile, Montgomery, Jones’ former boyfriend, has to face another prison term after serving his check-fraud sentence, wherein Steve Riddick, coach to both Montgomery and Jones, was also involved. Riddick was also convicted for conspiracy, bank fraud and money laundering charges.

After Montgomery completes his sentence for the fraud charges, the 33-year-old former record holder is to serve another five years for selling more than 100 grams of heroin. He was found guilty of this crime and sentenced to jail October this year.

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Former track superstar Marion Jones’ first interview since her release from a Texas federal prison last month was with the Talk Show Queen Oprah Winfrey.

Jones openly and tearfully talked about her fall from grace because of her use of anabolic steroids. She was confident to answer though that even without the illicit drugs she would still have won the gold medals at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.

“I’ll ask myself, `Well, if you hadn’t been given “the clear” do you think you would’ve won?”‘ Jones said on a taped episode of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” broadcast Wednesday.
“I usually answer, ‘Yes.”

Jones described her confrontation with the prosecutors when they showed her a vial of the designer steroid known as “The Clear”. Jones said she instantly knew it was the steroid Trevor Graham, her former coach, had given her. However, she opted to lie about it, saying she thought Graham was providing her with a flaxseed oil and that she only learned that it was actually tetrahydrogestrinone through the prosecutors.

“I made the decision I was going to lie and try to cover it up,” Jones said on Winfrey’s show. “I knew that all of my performances would be questioned.”

Jones was imprisoned for six months for lying about her use of steroids and her involvement in a check-fraud scam.

Since the BALCO scandal exploded in 2003, Jones had vehemently denied doping until her appearance before a federal court last year where and when she finally confessed that she was on “The Clear” from September 2000 to July 2001. Subsequent to her admission, Jones was stripped of all her medals she won in Sydney – three gold medals and two bronzes.

Jones also offered her apologies to her teammates who had also been stripped of their medals because of her doping infringement. She was part of the US relay teams that won gold medals in the 400-meter and 1,600-meter events in Sydney.

“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.”

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What now for Marion Jones

The one-time Olympic gold medalist was released on September 5, Friday. Jones has served most of her six-month sentence due to steroid-related charges. She will, however, remain on probation.

On January 11 this year,  Marion Jones was sentenced to 6 months in prison for perjury concerning her involvement in the check fraud case and her use of performance enhancing drugs. On March 11, she was ordered to surrender on March 11 to begin her jail term. When the BALCO Affair was exposed on 2003, Jones was among the most well-known athletes who got embroiled in the scandal. During the course of the investigation, she had repeatedly denied she had used steroids and any other performance-enhancing drugs. It was only last October that the sprinter finally confessed that she used the designer steroid known as the clear.
In 2004, Jones filed a defamation suit against Victor Conte, the infamous founder of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative, when Conte said the former world champion took steroids. The lawsuit was settled in 2005.

Jones won five medals in the 2000 Sydney Olympics but she was stripped of every medal dating back to September 2000 since her admission of steroid use.

The BALCO steroid scandal has denoted asterisks in many athletes’ career, including Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Antonio Pettigrew.

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The number of athletes who tested positive for steroids and other banned substances had hit 12-year low in the recently concluded Beijing Olympics and yet more and more athletes are being doubted for winning through legitimate means.

Take a look at the case of Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt and American swimming sensation Michael Phelps.

Bolt, who now currently holds both the Olympic and world records for the 100 meters, elicits some suspicion on his superb performance at the Bird’s Nest Stadium as he broke three world records in Beijing, way too easy in the opinions of fans and sports observers alike. This despite the fact that Bolt underwent rigorous and multiple drug screenings and passed them all.

Phelps, on the other hand, raked in eight gold medals in swimming and is now the proud holder of seven world records in swimming. And some opine the latest Spedoo LZR RACER swimwear might not be the only help the 23-year-old swimmer is getting when he hits the water.

The cynical view of many stems from the stark reality that former record holders and seemingly invincible Olympians have tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs later on in their careers. Marion Jones and Ben Johnson are just two of the many who had once basked in Olympic glory then retreated in disgrace because of steroid use.

American sprinter Michael Johnson acknowledges this problem.

“It’s unfortunate what has happened to the sport and it has to be addressed and it is being addressed,” Johnson said. “But if someone wants to believe the only way (Bolt) can do what he’s doing is through doping, that is their prerogative.” Johnson’s world record in the 200-meter dash was broken by Bolt in Beijing.

There is also the concern of new class of PEDs, called designer drugs, and newfangled doping techniques constantly emerging from some rudimentary lab in some obscure places across the United States and elsewhere. Gene doping is at the forefront of these new doping technologies and anti-doping officials scramble as they find new ways to detect them.

Remember the case of Marion Jones, et al? Jones, who is currently serving her 6-month prison term due to lying to investigators who questioned her about her use of steroids, breezed through screenings while using the latest designer steroid at that time THG, or tetrahydrogestrinone. Jones, with her apparent use of THG, conquered the track to win five medals in the Sydney Olympics in 2000.  Jones and the other athletes might have continued with such illegal practice had it not been for the whistleblower in their coop, her track coach Trevor Graham.

Only six athletes of the nearly 11,000 participants in Beijing fell to the dragnet of the IOC and the question hangs if how many of these athletes were able to outsmart officials and got away with the gold loot.

From bnd.com:

Clearing the Games’ reputation had been a top priority for the IOC coming into Beijing, and the number of doping tests conducted in competition jumped from 3,500 in Athens to a total of 4,500 planned by the end of the Beijing Games, IOC officials said.

The IOC also launched its first coordinated pre-games testing program, which caught 39 athletes and barred them from participating before the Aug. 8 opening ceremony. Such tests, for example, led to the entire Bulgarian weightlifting team to drop out before the Olympics.
While more positive drug test results could still turn up, especially for substances such as the blood booster erythropoietin, or EPOs, that take longer to detect, IOC officials were celebrating what they said was a victory for athletic fair play.

“We feel the deterrent effect played a part in what we see,” said IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies. “The athletes know that at this event the IOC, which is the organization running the doping programs, means business in not having those who cheat as a part of these events.”

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