Athletics: Conte Fails in Attempt to Escape Trial

A judge in the United States has rejected a request to dismiss the charges against Victor Conte and three other defendants in the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative steroid case, including Dwain Chambers' former coach Remi Korchemny.

Conte, the founder and owner of Balco, had asked the court to dismiss charges against him because of what he claimed was "outrageous government conduct" and other violations. He did, however, score a minor victory when the judge ordered a hearing into whether the government acted properly during the investigation.

Conte, his business partner James Valente, Korchemny and Greg Anderson - the personal trainer of baseball's Barry Bonds - are charged with distributing steroids in a scandal which has implicated some of the best-known figures in world sport. All have pleaded not guilty.

Conte appeared to have undermined his own defence this month when he ignored the advice of his lawyer and appeared on television and wrote a magazine article in which he admitted distributing steroids to top athletes. These included Chambers, Britain's European 100 metres champion, who is now serving a two-year ban after testing positive for the designer anabolic steroid tetrahydrogestrinone (THG).

Conte also claimed to have devised a doping regime for the American triple Olympic champion Marion Jones. In public Jones has insisted she never used drugs and repeated those denials under oath to the grand jury. She is now suing Conte.

Legal experts in the US say prosecutors should have little trouble in getting Conte's televised confession admitted as evidence when the trial begins, probably in March. The video would not only undermine Conte's claim of innocence but also possibly pose a similar problem to his co-defendants.

The London Marathon race director David Bedford has paid tribute to the South African runner Ian Syster, who died in a car accident on Christmas Day along with his two-month-old son. Syster, 28, finished fifth in the 2002 London Marathon and ninth the following year.

Bedford, who announced last week that Syster would be returning for next year's 25th anniversary race on April 17, said: "Ian, apart from being one of the greatest marathon runners, was one of the nicest persons you could hope to meet."