Sport: Chasing The Truth

Even if you're the fastest couple in the world, there are certain things you can't outrun--like Johnny Law. So Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery, the sprinting champions, find themselves caught in the center of a U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) investigation into steroid use by athletes. Both deny taking banned performance-enhancing drugs, and neither has been formally charged. Still, as the allegations spread all the way up Olympus to the U.S.'s top track-and-field stars, it looks as if either we'll be sending a scandal-tainted team to the Games or those of you with decent running shoes can score a free ticket to Athens.

Jones and her attorneys requested a meeting last week with investigators and learned the extent of the evidence against her. Their conclusion: it is too weak to keep her from competing in the Olympics. Jones has, in fact, threatened to sue if she is barred from Athens without a positive drug test. No athlete has ever been barred without such proof, but the USADA does have the power to use other evidence, called a nonanalytical positive, to link an athlete to banned substances.

That kind of evidence might include the documents emerging these days from the offices of the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (BALCO), a San Francisco--area company that is the target of a federal investigation into steroid distribution and money laundering. BALCO is responsible for creating THG (tetrahydrogestrinone, for you Olympic fans keeping illegal-drug box scores at home), a steroid that was designed to elude detection on doping tests. BALCO also makes a perfectly legal mineral supplement called ZMA (mostly zinc and magnesium), which it got famous athletes to mention in public a lot (Jones has touted it and still takes it).

The San Mateo Narcotics Task Force and the IRS raided BALCO last September and carted off enough boxes of evidence to ban four U.S. track-and-field athletes and start investigating nine more. Two weeks ago, the USADA got sprinter Kelli White to confess to using a series of banned drugs, accept a two-year suspension from the sport and agree to help with the investigation. Jones and Montgomery were among 27 athletes reportedly named by BALCO founder Victor Conte as having received THG, according to a federal investigator's memo. Conte denies making that admission. What the USADA showed Jones and her attorneys last week were BALCO notebooks that contain circumstantial evidence, such as a training calendar with the initials M.J. and letters whose meaning is not clear but that may be abbreviations for certain steroids. While that may not look good for Jones, it's equally possible that Michael Jackson has just been bulking up with nutritional supplements.

Under equal scrutiny from the USADA is Jones' boyfriend, Montgomery. "[He is] getting smeared by rumor and innuendo," says his lawyer, Cristina Arguedas, who objects to the USADA's unprecedented threat to bar an athlete from competition without an admission of drug taking or a urine sample that tested positive for illegal substances. "He's never had a dirty drug test in his life." As of last week, the USADA hadn't contacted Montgomery.