Balco Founder 'to Name' Athletes on Steroids

Drugs in sport

The United States Olympic team's preparations for the games in Athens, already mired in a steroid-abuse scandal, plunged towards crisis last night as it emerged that the founder of a supplements laboratory is ready to expose several leading US athletes who used illegal drugs.

Lawyers for Victor Conte, founder of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (Balco), met government officials yesterday to discuss a plea-bargain deal in which Conte would receive a lenient sentence in criminal proceedings against him in exchange for naming athletes whom he supplied with performance-enhancing drugs, including the designer steroid tetrahydrogestrinone (THG).

Any evidence given by Conte could also be used by the US Anti-Doping Agency, which is charged with enforcing Olympic doping rules, in its efforts to root out drug cheats before the games in August.

Conte, along with three others, is facing charges of steroid distribution and money laundering arising from a police raid at Balco's laboratory near San Francisco in September during which officers removed samples, as well as documentation detailing the laboratory's dealings with hundreds of the most famous names in US track and field, American football and baseball. The raid followed the discovery of THG, a hitherto undetectable steroid developed at Balco.

A number of world-class athletes were then found to have used the drug, including the British sprinter Dwaine Chambers, who was banned from competition for two years.

Last month Kelli White, who won the 100 and 200 metres at the 2003 world championships in Paris, was banned for two years and stripped of her medals after admitting using THG. She made her admission after being confronted with evidence obtained from the Balco laboratory by a US Congressional committee and then passed on to the USADA.

She received a lenient sentence in exchange for cooperation with USADA investigations against other athletes. In recent days Marion Jones, winner of five medals at the Sydney Games, met the USADA to discuss her dealings with Conte, her long-time nutritionist.

Jones, who has never failed a drug test and has long denied using performance-enhancing drugs, has said she will challenge any effort to stop her competing in Athens. Troy Ellerman, one of the lawyers representing Balco and Conte, said last night: "Mr Conte wants the same thing as the USADA: to send a clean US team to the Olympic Games."