Tennis: Rusedski Asked Conte for Advice

Greg Rusedski's fight to repair his reputation was not helped yesterday when it emerged, in a Californian newspaper, that his father Tom enlisted the help of the disgraced nutritionist Victor Conte, the man accused of supplying the anabolic steroid THG to a host of high-profile athletes including the British sprinter Dwain Chambers, now banned.

According to a report in the San Jose Mercury News, Rusedski Sr received a fax from Conte pledging his support to the British No2 in his anti-doping case. Conte's company, the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (Balco), is at the centre of a federal investiga tion involving drug and fraud charges. "This nandrolone contamination problem is the most unfair and unreasonable situation in the history of anti-doping in sport," wrote Conte in the fax, of which the newspaper claims to have a copy.

Surprisingly, the newspaper claims Tom Rusedski, who was unavailable for comment last night, had actively sought out Conte's help.

It is hard to fathom why a man whose son spent hundreds of thousands of pounds clearing his name after testing positive for nandrolone would deliberately link himself with someone such as Conte, although the nutritionist did provide public support for the US shot putter CJ Hunter when he tested positive for nandrolone before the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

At that stage Conte was still viewed as a respected name in the sports supplement and nutrition industry, a man whose organisation worked with some of sport's biggest names, including the Denver Broncos, the Olympic sprinter Marion Jones and the baseball player Barry Bonds.

Bonds' coach Greg Anderson is one of three men who, with Conte, have been indicted by a grand jury on 42 charges relating to financial irregularities and the supply of banned substances to athletes. The others are Remi Korchemny, Chambers' coach, and James Valente, a Balco executive.

Balco's website still boasts of the company's clients in tennis, although there is nothing to suggest that Rusedski was among them. Ivan Lendl, Jim Courier and Michael Chang are all named on the site.

Any link with Conte, however innocent, is the last thing Rusedski needs after being declared innocent of steroid abuse on Tuesday. Since he first announced, in January, that he had tested positive for nandrolone during a tournament in Indianapolis last summer, he and his legal team have been battling to clear his name. They were finally vindicated this week when a tribunal found him innocent on the grounds that the nandrolone in his system may have come from contaminated supplements supplied by trainers from the ATP, the governing body of men's tennis. Seven other players were cleared of charges on the same basis last year.

Controversy still haunts men's tennis after at least 63 of the world's top 150 male players, tested since August 2002, were shown to have higher than normal levels of nandrolone in their systems. The World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) is currently investigating the matter and is due to publish a report in the next few weeks.

Tim Montgomery, the 100m world record holder, has been dragged further into the federal government's investigation into Balco after a bodybuilder who designed work-outs for him was served with a subpoena at an Ohio convention which a company owned by Arnold Schwarzenegger helped organise. It has been reported that agents raided the California home and gymnasium of Milos Sarcev, a former Mr Yugoslavia.

Sarcev was handcuffed as his premises were searched and his computer and other items were taken, sources told the San Jose Mercury News. The search warrant said the authorities were looking for illegal substances and documents related to Balco and Conte.

Sarcev has helped train a number of elite athletes associated with Balco, including Montgomery, who testified before a San Francisco grand jury last year along with his partner, Marion Jones.

The grand jury also asked about Montgomery's former coach, the Jamaican international Trevor Graham, who has worked with six top international athletes who have subsequently tested positive for banned anabolic steroids.

The subpoenas require the recipients to testify this month. It is believed at least five bodybuilders received subpoenas.