Coach: Sex, drugs and many lies
2008-05-01 14:19
San Francisco - Almost four years ago, athletics coach Trevor Graham sat in his lawyer's office with U.S. government investigators and told a gossipy tale of sex, greed, doping and betrayal among the elite athletes he trained.
Graham said he was the first person Olympic champion Marion Jones told that she was ending her marriage to shot putter C.J. Hunter because he was sleeping with teammate Michelle Collins. Graham said he kicked Collins out of his training group because of friction between the women.
He also alleged that convicted steroids peddler Victor Conte offered to publicly defend Hunter after he failed a doping test just before the Sydney Olympics in exchange for Jones' endorsement of supplements Conte sold through BALCO.
Conte on Wednesday denied Graham's charges, saying "he made that up out of whole cloth."
Graham's story is contained in 11 pages of notes taken by Jeff Novitzky, the government's top sports doping detective, during a June 4, 2004 interview in Raleigh, North Carolina. The notes were included in court documents filed late Tuesday by Graham's lawyers.
Graham is charged with lying to investigators about distributing steroids to athletes. His trial is scheduled to begin later this month in San Francisco.
In the court papers, Graham's attorneys asked U.S. District Judge Susan Illston to limit what prosecutors can tell jurors about the number of athletes Graham trained who were caught doping.
At least six elite athletes who trained under Graham have tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs or admitted taking banned substances.
The government doesn't plan on calling all the athletes to testify but hasn't disclosed who will be summoned.
"Allowing references to the number of Mr. Graham's athletes who have been sanctioned for or admitted doping would unfairly tarnish Mr. Graham," Graham's attorney William Keane wrote in the court filing.
The judge is scheduled to consider the issue May 6.
Graham helped launch the probe of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO) in 2003 when he sent the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency a vial of "the clear," also known as the steroid THG, which was designed to evade detection. Investigators traced the syringe back to BALCO, which was found to have distributed performance-enhancing drugs to numerous elite athletes in many different sports.
Now, Graham is charged with denying he bought steroids for his athletes on numerous occasions from Angel "Memo" Heredia, a Laredo, Texas-based weight coach who Graham denied ever meeting in person.
Graham told Novitzky during the interview _ and has maintained since _ that he never dabbled in performance-enhancing drugs. He said the only substances he gave Jones were a sports drink, protein and potassium to relieve cramps. He said he never heard or saw Jones take any banned substances.
Jones, who won three gold and two bronze medals in the 2000 Sydney Olympics, has since been stripped of her medals.
When Jones pleaded guilty last year to lying to federal investigators about her doping, she said Graham gave her a designer steroid when she was training with him from September 2000 until July 2001.
In 2003, Jones fired Graham after he refused to add new provisions to their contract that included barring his family members from watching her workouts and requiring Graham to stop wearing headphones during training sessions, according to the court filing.
Even though their split was acrimonious, Graham still professed respect for Jones' work ethic during the interview with Novitzky.
"Jones was such a hard worker on the track that she would drive herself to the point of throwing up," Novitzky's statement said.
Jones, a mother of two, began serving a six-month prison sentence on March 7 in Fort Worth, Texas.
- AP