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Montgomery ruling a "reminder" about doping charges, CAS

 

Montgomery ruling a "reminder" about doping charges, CAS

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AOC

International sport's top tribunal said the landmark verdict against US sprinter Tim Montgomery was a stark reminder to athletes...

International sport's top tribunal said the landmark verdict against US sprinter Tim Montgomery was a stark reminder to athletes that they can be sanctioned for doping without failing tests.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) yesterday upheld doping charges brought by the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) in June 2004 based largely on other evidence - including testimony from another athlete.

 "There is no reason to believe that the world of sport has seen the last of this sort of `no adverse analytical finding' case," the three lawyers on the CAS panel said in their ruling against Montgomery.

Former world 100m record holder Montgomery and Chryste Gaines, a member of the US women's 4x100m gold medal-winning team at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, were banned for two years for doping offences.

The athletes were implicated in the criminal investigation into the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative scandal in California.

BALCO head Victor Conte was sentenced to four months in prison last October after pleading guilty to distributing steroids.

The main substance made by the BALCO lab, which is said to have supplied the two athletes, was the designer steroid THG (tetrahydrogestrinone). It was unknown to testers until last year.

The bans will start from June 6 this year, the first day of the CAS hearing into the case.

CAS also ruled that all Montgomery's results from March 31, 2001 should be annulled and his earnings confiscated.

US sprinter Kelli White said under oath that she had had a conversation with Montgomery at an athletics meeting in Portugal in 2001 about the effect of illicit steroid nicknamed "Clear", which she had also taken.

Montgomery did not give evidence to the panel.

Its ruling said the testimony was "fatal to his (Montgomery's) case."

White's account to the CAS panel was "clear, accurate and passionate" and she could have faced a full-blown legal charge for perjury if she was lying, Reeb said.

"I think it's a reminder," Reeb said.

"Doping can be established by any kind of evidence, provided that this evidence is sufficiently convincing and clear for the CAS arbitrators and for the instances that have to adjudicate doping cases.

President of the World Anti-Doping Agency body Dick Pound also saw how yesterday's ruling sounded a warning to drug cheats.

"Finally a stake has been driven through the heart of the preposterous argument that you have to have a doping infraction by producing an analytical positive doping test," Pound said.

"Everybody knows it is a nonsensical argument, but until CAS says so it is not a precedent."

But Montgomery's former lawyer Howard Jacobs said that the prosecution twisted the meaning of White's evidence.

White testified only that she asked the disgraced sprinter about the steroid's effects on his calves not that Montgomery had told her, he said.

Jacobs, who parted ways with client two weeks ago for reasons unknown and earlier accused USADA of a smear campaign, suggested that the agency's case must have been weak.

"They asked for a lifetime ban until the end of the hearing then they asked for a four-year ban," Jacobs said of the proposed penalty, which was eventually reduced to two years.

Montgomery, who has denied ever taking drugs, would be eligible to compete again from the summer of 2007 but his coach has said that the shell-shocked sprinter is considering retirement.

AFP

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