How Balco built the world's fastest man

In November 2000, five men with big dreams sat around a wooden conference table in a back room at Balco Laboratories in Burlingame.

There, they mapped a program of coaching, weight training and pharmacology they christened ``Project World Record'' -- a program that would propel sprinter Tim Montgomery to run the fastest-ever 100-meter time nearly two years later.

That meeting also set the scene for the biggest drug scandal in American sports history.

The tale of Montgomery's ascent in track and field is the story of Balco. It shows how Balco owner Victor Conte Jr. quietly marshaled a team with experience in performance-enhancing drugs and training to make Montgomery the world's fastest man -- and that, in turn, would help promote Conte's legal supplement ZMA.

Because of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency's aggressive campaign to remove athletes from competition even without positive drug tests, Montgomery could become one of the targets.

Although he is not the only athlete with Balco ties, the 29-year-old Montgomery illustrates how Conte's program of sports drugs and training worked -- and how the acrimonious breakup of the Project World Record team also probably played the key role in the public exposure of Balco and the designer drug at the center of the case, THG.

The group forms

Over a three-day period that November, the five men gathered in a room that featured a wall poster quoting Albert Einstein: ``Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.''

According to sources and corroborating documents seen by the Mercury News, the five were: Conte, Montgomery, track coaches Trevor Graham and Charlie Francis, and strength coach Milos Sarcev, a former Mr. Yugoslavia bodybuilder.

Francis, the ostracized Canadian coach of disgraced sprinter Ben Johnson, designed the workout program for Montgomery. Graham, the coach who helped Marion Jones win five medals at the Sydney Games, implemented the program with Montgomery on the track.

Sarcev designed a strength program that added bulk to the slightly built Montgomery.

Conte, a self-taught nutritionist with a reputation as a motivator of athletes, masterminded the project. He would provide one of its secret ingredients. It was a substance the group called ``clear'' that Conte received from an Illinois chemist named Patrick Arnold, according to an Internal Revenue Service investigator's account of an interview with Conte last September.

Whether members of the team knew ``clear'' would be considered a banned substance is uncertain. But under Olympic doping rules of ``strict liability,'' athletes are responsible for any substance is found in their bodies that is determined to be banned.

It would only be in the summer of 2003 that such determination would be made. Don Catlin, chief of the Olympic drug-testing laboratory at UCLA, identified the substance and gave it a scientific name -- tetrahydrogestrinone, or THG -- and status as a banned drug.

A training calendar reviewed by the Mercury News showed that Montgomery was scheduled to use ``clear'' eight times in May 2001. For example, the team told him to use it on the day he ran at the Modesto Relays on May 12. He was scheduled to use THG a week later at a Georgia Tech meet and yet again at a meet in Eugene, Ore., on May 27.

Cristina C. Arguedas, an attorney for Montgomery, told the Mercury News, ``Tim Montgomery is a world-class runner who has never posted a dirty test in his life and is now being smeared by rumor and innuendo, and it is not fair. There is no evidence that Tim Montgomery took a banned substance of any kind in his life.''

Except for Montgomery, the men consented to signing non-disclosure agreements with Conte.

The group decided to keep their union quiet because they didn't want Francis publicly linked with Montgomery. Francis was banned from coaching in Canada after Johnson was stripped of his 1988 Olympic 100-meter gold medal because he tested positive for the anabolic steroid stanzolol.

Reached by the Mercury News, Francis declined to publicly discuss his relationship with Montgomery and Balco.

But Conte was proud enough of the association to hand out black T-shirts emblazoned with the logo: Project World Record.

A bold prediction

Montgomery, from Gaffney, S.C., always had been fast. He has told interviewers that speed is in his genes and that his mother -- according to family legend -- once chased a rabbit until its heart stopped.

At Blinn Junior College in Texas, he ran the 100 meters in 9.96 seconds, although it was later determined that the course was 3.7 centimeters short. He also won Olympic medals -- a silver in 1996 and a gold in 2000 -- for running in preliminary heats of the 400-meter relay.

Montgomery had predicted for years that he would break Maurice Greene's world record in the 100 meters. But his mouth was faster than his feet. By his mid-20s, Montgomery had hit a wall.

He has said his breakthrough occurred in 1999 when he started training with Jones -- who later became his romantic interest and now is the mother of their young son.

But it seemed to take more than Jones and Graham's Sprint Capital club in Raleigh, N.C., to launch Montgomery to the top. That's where Balco and its training program came in.

The connection seemed to begin when Jones worked with Conte for about seven weeks before the 2000 Olympics. She has denied having a close link to Conte and has said repeatedly that she has never used banned drugs.

At the time, Jones was married to shot putter C.J. Hunter, who tested positive for the steroid nandrolone a few months before the Sydney Games.

Conte surfaced at a news conference in Sydney defending Hunter. He said that the positive test came from a contaminated supplement. About the same time, Montgomery met the nutritionist.

Two months later they were in the room at Balco. The cornerstone to Conte's Project World Record plan was to make Montgomery stronger. One of Montgomery's nicknames is Tiny Tim. Then 5-foot-9, 148 pounds and ranked No. 8 in the world, Montgomery had trouble competing against sprinters who were built like locomotives.

But the transformation in Montgomery was immediate. Conte's nutrition plan helped him gain about 28 pounds, and Sarcev's program led to an 80-pound increase on the bench press over an eight-week period. Montgomery began ingesting a complex nutritional program filled with legal supplements, including ZMA, a zinc-magnesium combination. He also is alleged to have used THG, according to an IRS agent's memorandum.

Sarcev developed exercises to help increase explosive starts for sprinters.

``Victor asked me to come to Burlingame and help Tim with his strength training,'' Sarcev told the Mercury News last October. ``So I prepared a program for Tim. He accepted it, and he improved dramatically. Tim was very grateful for my work.''

Meanwhile, Francis cut the number of Montgomery's practice starts per week from 30 to 15 because he believed Graham had been overworking the sprinter. At the time, Francis and Montgomery met only twice -- in November 2000 and January 2001 at the College of San Mateo. Montgomery mostly used Francis' written instructions while training at North Carolina State with Graham.

But the sprinter also visited the Bay Area a number of times to train without the others. He would follow Sarcev's program under the guidance of Greg Anderson, Barry Bonds' trainer. Anderson's involvement only dealt with the weight training. In February of this year, Anderson was indicted -- along with Conte, Balco executive James Valente and track coach Remi Korchemny -- on federal charges of distributing drugs to athletes.

At the world indoor championships in 2001, Montgomery placed second in the 60 meters in a career-best 6.46 seconds. That summer, Montgomery lowered his personal best in the 100 meters from 9.92 seconds to 9.84 with a pair of borrowed shoes from Jones. He then won the silver medal at the world outdoor championships in 9.85 seconds.

On Sept. 14, 2002, Montgomery finally was as good as his word. He set the 100-meter gold record with a blazing time of 9.78 seconds in Paris. But by then, the Project World Record team had disintegrated. The lingering ill will among Conte, Montgomery and Graham may have been the genesis of the Balco scandal.

Acrimonious split

A source told the Mercury News that Conte decided to stop working with Montgomery at least partially because of a squabble over money.

The falling out was bitter.

By last season, Montgomery had been supplanted by a young English sprinter, Dwain Chambers, as Balco's chosen one. Chambers and two other sprinters with Balco connections, Kelli White and Chryste Gaines, had emerged as world beaters.

In a sport of petty jealousies, this didn't sit well with Balco's rivals.

In June 2003, a prominent track and field coach anonymously sent a syringe with residual amounts of ``clear,'' identifying Balco as the source and providing names of athletes who used the substance, according to court records.

UCLA's drug testers were able to identify THG, and five track athletes tied to Balco -- including Chambers -- tested positive for the substance. Four of those caught were from the U.S. national championships at Stanford in June.

Anti-doping officials have declined to reveal the coach's identify, and Graham has denied published reports that he was the source.

Graham, 40, told the Mercury News earlier this year: ``I have nothing to say about Victor Conte.'' He did not respond to repeated messages this week.

Montgomery and Graham split last season over a disputed $12,500, according to Wake County (N.C.) court records.

Meanwhile, Conte was considering making his own charges. He wrote a letter to the anti-doping agency and the track's world governing body accusing Graham of supplying athletes with the oral steroid testosterone, according to the IRS investigator's account report. Conte's lawyers have said that the government memorandum is filled with errors and exaggerations.

An investigator found several drafts of the letter in Balco's trash. It was never sent.

The fallout

Today, four of the Project World Record participants face increasing scrutiny over the mushrooming drug scandal.

Conte is under indictment. Last month, the Mercury News reported that the disputed IRS account indicates that Conte named 27 athletes to whom he provided performance-enhancing drugs. Notable among those 27: Montgomery, Jones, Gaines, White (who has since accepted a two-year ban from USADA) and every athlete -- save one, hammer thrower Melissa Price -- who has tested positive for THG.

Graham piqued the interest of the federal grand jury that investigated Balco. Two witnesses who appeared before the grand jury told the Mercury News that they were asked about the coach during their testimonies.

Last November, Drug Enforcement Agency agents searched Sarcev's Temecula home and asked questions about Montgomery and several other athletes with Balco ties, according to a source familiar with the investigation.

Montgomery, who testified before a San Francisco grand jury probing Balco last year, now might face sanctions from the anti-doping agency. And his career on the track is sputtering.

In Mexico City on Saturday, he finished sixth in the 100 meters with a time of 10.24.

As he has done since his name came up in connection with Balco, he declined to talk to reporters.