Sport: Chasing The Truth

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This isn't the kind of publicity Jones and Montgomery are used to. The pair, who have trained together since 1999, first got close in 2001 after an airline lost Montgomery's luggage and he borrowed Jones' shoes for a meet. (His feet are only one size bigger than hers.) That was less than a year after Jones' then husband shot-putter C.J. Hunter got busted at the 2000 Olympics for taking steroids. (The New York Times reported that Hunter wrote a $7,350 check from Jones' account to BALCO in 2000, according to two sources with knowledge of the check.) Jones, 28, divorced him and surprised fans when she kissed Montgomery, 29, on the finish line in Paris in September 2002 after Montgomery broke the 100-m-dash world record. Compared with track and field, Hollywood seems like a healthy environment for couples.

Since then, the world's fastest couple have been the sport's darlings. They're good-looking, they win, they share shoes, and they've now had a baby together, Monty, who can undoubtedly crawl with alacrity. They even have each other's names tattooed on their arms. Jones--who is so good that when she got three golds and two bronzes at the Olympics in 2000, she considered it a disappointment--is charismatic, does charity work and constantly signs autographs for kids. She's known for her intensity. "Marion's work ethic was like none I've ever seen," says veteran sports journalist Ron Rapoport, author of See How She Runs: Marion Jones and the Making of a Champion.

Montgomery is known for his cockiness, claims that his mother once chased a rabbit until its heart exploded and has ordered a vanity plate that reads 9.75, which is three-hundredths of a second under his world-record time in the 100-m dash. His Rocky-style ascent to the top of sprinting came after he gained 28 lbs. and increased his bench press by 80 lbs. in just eight weeks. In two years he went from being No. 8 in the world to breaking Maurice Greene's 100-m world record. Jones' times, as her lawyers keep reminding everyone, have been consistently improving since she was in high school.

But neither of them helped their reputations by working, briefly, with coach Charlie Francis, who was the trainer for sprinter Ben Johnson when he was caught with steroids in the 1988 Olympics. Francis later admitted that he incorporated drugs into Johnson's workouts.

Athletes and officials in the world of track and field hope the current investigations reach the finish line swiftly. "It's in the interest of the sport that whatever the evidence is, that it come out and the convicted be kicked out of our sport as soon as possible, " says Craig Masback, CEO of USA Track & Field.

Former Olympian and longtime track-and-field TV commentator Dwight Stones, 50, says steroids pervaded the sport as far back as the 1970s. In 1976, he says, he was tempted to take dianabol, an earlier steroid, at the Olympics. But "it wasn't enough of a guarantee of improvement that I was willing to risk breaking the rules and potentially impacting my children or grandchildren," he says. One fair solution, as Stones sees it, would be to "legalize all steroids. That would surely level the playing field." While that might be an easy fix, it would turn sports into a test to see whose liver processed drugs best, a world where the long-jump record could be held by Keith Richards.