Sprinter Says Ban Is End of His Career

A day after being hit with a two-year doping ban, sprinter Tim Montgomery said he had never deliberately taken performance-enhancing substances and had been unfairly suspended, but nevertheless was announcing his retirement from track and field.

“I’m done,” he said.

He also said he believes anti-doping authorities aggressively pursued proceedings against him as a way of trying to build a case against Marion Jones, who won five Olympic medals at the 2000 Sydney Games, three gold. Jones and Montgomery are the parents of a 2-year-old son; they broke up a few months ago, he said, and live in different states, he in Virginia, she in North Carolina.

Montgomery said in a telephone interview: “I got nothing on her.” Asked whether Jones, who has denied the use of performance-enhancing substances, is clean, he replied, “Yeah.”

Montgomery’s remarks came after a decision by the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport to impose two-year doping-related bans on him and another top U.S. sprinter, Chryste Gaines. The case against Montgomery, the tribunal said, involved “strong ... evidence of doping.”

Said Montgomery: “I never took anything knowingly. No.”

Montgomery was ordered to forfeit all winnings and results since March 31, 2001, including the then-world record in the 100 meters, 9.78 seconds, set in Paris in 2002. Jamaican sprinter Asafa Powell had broken the record, running 9.77 in June 2005 at Athens.

International track officials have said they intend to seek to recover Montgomery’s earnings.

Montgomery gets to keep the gold medal he won at the Sydney Games in the 400-meter relay.

The case against Montgomery turned on the testimony of another U.S. sprinter, Kelli White, herself serving a two-year ban for doping.

She testified about a conversation she and Montgomery had in 2001 in Portugal during which, according to the CAS, they purportedly talked about effects of the use of the designer steroid THG.

The CAS called that “fatal to his case.”

He said: “You couldn’t bring nobody in there but Kelli White? And this is what sealed the deal for them?”

Montgomery, 30, said he finds himself facing an uncertain future solely because of his association with Victor Conte, the founder and head of Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative in Burlingame, Calif., the self-described nutritionist at the center of the most far-reaching doping scandal in U.S. sports history.

Conte reported to prison Dec. 1 to begin serving eight months in custody.

“My mom always taught me: Be careful with the company you keep,” Montgomery said. “Being around Victor -- I understand. But not everybody that’s around somebody is doing what they say that person is doing.”

The San Francisco Chronicle reported in June 2004 that Montgomery told a grand jury investigating the BALCO scandal that Conte gave him regular doses of human growth hormone and THG, code-named “the clear.”

Montgomery said Wednesday that Conte never identified a substance to him as “the clear” or THG.

He said he was warned before his testimony on Nov. 6, 2003, that if he didn’t tell the truth “we are going to get you for perjury.”

He said Wednesday: “I told the grand jury, they asked me, this guy said, ‘Did you take a liquid substance with Victor?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘Are you telling me you were taking THG?’ I said, ‘No, I don’t know the name of it; it didn’t have that name. I know flaxseed oil, that’s all I know.’

“They said, ‘Flaxseed oil is used to mask THG.’ I say, ‘I don’t know all this. I don’t have the information that y’all are saying right now. So I don’t know what you’re talking about. All I know is I took flaxseed oil.’ ”

Montgomery also said: “When the paper comes out and says, ‘THG,” I say, ‘No, we need to see the real grand jury [testimony].’ ”

Referring to the allegation about growth hormone, he said, describing what the Chronicle reported: “ ‘Tim Montgomery take GH.’ No. Tim Montgomery didn’t take no GH.”