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Marion Jones’ husband injecting her with banned drugs. Tim Montgomery going into Mexico with an admitted steroids dealer to test his blood for doping. Antonio Pettigrew routinely receiving overnight packages stuffed with the oxygen-boosting EPO.
That and much more of US athletics’ doping scandal was tediously laid out during testimony on Tuesday at former coach Trevor Graham’s trial.
Graham is charged with three counts of lying to government authorities investigating a massive sports doping ring centered at the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, or BALCO, in the San Francisco suburb of Burlingame.
It was only the second day of an expected two week trial, but already the names of many of the United States’ doping-disgraced athletes from around the 2000 Olympics in Sydney were dredged up.
Jones, Montgomery and Pettigrew each won gold in Sydney while training with Graham.
Lead government investigator Jeff Novitzky testified that shot putter C.J. Hunter, who tested positive for banned substance right before the Sydney games, twice injected his then-wife Jones with EPO.
The government’s key witness, admitted performance enhancing drug dealer Angel “Memo” Heredia, testified he helped those athletes and others – through Graham – obtain banned performance-enhancing drugs.
With three months to the Beijing Olympics, the day’s testimony focused on the many athletes Heredia claims to have set up with performance-enhancing drugs. All three of Graham’s charges are connected to his telling Novitzky that he had only one benign telephone call with Heredia in 1996 and never met or bought drugs from the Mexican native.
Heredia testified that in December 1996 Graham drove 22-hours from Raleigh, North Carolina, to Laredo to consummate a drug distribution relationship. Heredia even had photographs of the trip, where he said Graham stayed at his apartment for several days and that they crossed the border to Mexico at least once.
“He wanted it for some of his athletes that at the time were in his camp,” Heredia said of his relationship with Graham during the run up to the 2000 Olympics. “I told him I could pretty much get everything in Mexico.”
On Monday, Graham’s attorney William Keane conceded the trainer did make that trip but “misspoke” when he told investigators otherwise.
Keane is expected to put Heredia, who hadn’t finished testifying at the end of the court session Tuesday, through a tough cross examination when he gets a chance to question him Wednesday. Keane has alleged that Heredia continued to deal drugs even after he agreed to cooperate with the government.
Novitzky, who spent the morning and most of the afternoon testifying, showed the jury a file labeled “Trevor Graham,” seized during the December 2003 raid he led on BALCO.
One of the handwritten notes in the folder purported to discuss “beans,” which Novitzky told the jury was slang for a steroid pill. But Keane, during cross examination, countered that the word could have been “beam,” which he said is a type of device used to time athletes.
Novitzky, who is now an agent for the U.S. government’s Food and Drug Administration, also told the jury that one of the documents seized appeared to discuss Jones’ doping regimen leading up to the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. Additionally, he talked about documents showing banned substance use by the twins Alvin and Calvin Harrison and Ramon Clay.
Novitzky said investigators became interested in talking to Graham after Jones, who won five Olympic medals, told a grand jury she had never knowingly taken banned substances.
Graham’s wife, a deputy sheriff who served in the narcotics unit in Wake County, North Carolina, sat in the front row scribbling in a notebook.
Graham is the second BALCO figure to face trial. A federal jury earlier found bicyclist Tammy Thomas guilty of lying to a federal grand jury when she denied taking steroids.
In addition, eight others, including BALCO founder Victor Conte and Jones, have pleaded guilty to various charges of drug dealing and lying to federal investigators.
Jones is serving a six-month prison sentence and Montgomery was recently sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to writing fraudulent cheques. He also faces heroin distribution charges.