San Diego

A former Olympic track star charged with heading an international steroid smuggling ring is expected to leave a San Diego jail today for the first time in 3 1/2 months after a federal judge reduced his bail.

U.S. District Judge J. Lawrence Irving sliced the bail Thursday for David Jenkins, a British citizen who lives in Carlsbad, to $750,000 from $1 million after Jenkins’ attorney agreed to turn over extensive British banking records sought by federal prosecutors.

Jenkins, a member of Britain’s 1,600-meter relay team that won a silver medal in the 1972 Munich Olympics, will post $200,000 cash, while friends and relatives agreed to pledge their homes, worth about $550,000, as an assurance that he will appear in court, according to Asst. U.S. Atty. Phillip L.B. Halpern.

Jenkins and 33 others were indicted in May on charges that they were members of a ring that claimed to control 70% of the $100-million U.S. black market in anabolic steroids, the bulk-producing drugs popular with professional and amateur athletes.