Fast and furious
Exclusive
Duncan Mackay in Los Angeles
Sunday April 20, 2008
The Observer
They were once the best of friends and the closest of training partners, as well as the greatest of rivals, but now it appears that Maurice Greene and Ato Boldon have fallen out spectacularly over allegations that Greene used banned performance-enhancing drugs.
A scandal that started nearly five years ago when Britain's Dwain Chambers tested positive for drugs given to him by Victor Conte's Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (Balco) has now consumed Greene, statistically the greatest sprinter in history, and Boldon is furious, because he fears it has cast a shadow over his own achievements.
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For nearly a decade Greene, the cocky gunslinger of a sprinter from Kansas City, and Boldon, the eloquent Trinidadian contemporary of Brian Lara and Dwight Yorke, were the best double act in athletics - on and off the track. They were coached in Los Angeles by John Smith, the former world-record holder for 440 yards, and they dominated the 100 metres. Their rivalry peaked at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 when Greene won the gold, narrowly edging Boldon into the silver-medal position.
At the finish they embraced warmly, celebrating the fulfilment of a dream they had shared for several years through hard, gruelling training sessions in the broiling Californian sunshine, and shared a lap of honour. On the podium they hugged each other like brothers and at the press conference afterwards the affection between the two was clear for everyone to see as they joked their way through a laugh-a-minute, hour-long session with the world's media.
But, as yet unproven, claims by Angel Guillermo Heredia, the main witness in a case due to come to court next month involving Marion Jones' former coach, that Greene gave him up to $40,000 for advice and steroid creams, EPO, insulin and stimulants in 2003 and 2004, have certainly wiped the smile off Boldon's face.
A letter, widely believed to have been written by Boldon, the 1997 world 200m champion, has been sent to Smith accusing him, Greene and Emmanuel Hudson, his former agent, of betraying him by obtaining banned drugs behind his back, lying about Greene competing clean and leaving a stain on his own career. Together with Boldon the three were the linchpin of HSI International, the management group that was able to charge six-figure appearance fees for Greene and Boldon to run in televised meetings around the world.
Observer Sport has seen a copy of the letter, which offers a fascinating insight into the, until now, secret and mysterious methods of a training group that included some of the world's greatest sprinters. Greene was the star of the group, a winner of two Olympic gold medals and six world championship titles, who, in 1999, set a world record of 9.79sec for the 100m, one of 52 times he broke 10 seconds for the distance, another record.
The letter begins by addressing Smith as 'Benedict Arnold', an American military hero during the War of Independence whose name has become synonymous with betrayal after he switched sides and fought for the British. 'My own coach, doping my competition while he smiles in my face and preaches the "we are clean and they are not" gospel,' he writes.
Greene has always denied being involved in doping. Only last month when I interviewed him at the world indoor championships in Valencia, where he was unveiled as an official ambassador for the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) following his retirement in February, he talked about how the sport is being damaged by so many drugs scandals.
'I don't think it's totally tainted, but every time the issue comes up it hurts us very bad,' he said. 'If it happens in baseball they hardly skip a beat. I feel cheated a little bit. It's hard in your mind if you have always got a question mark in your mind who's doing stuff behind closed doors. But you have to compete to the very best of your ability.'
The IAAF have said they will continue to use Greene as an ambassador. 'None of this is new. There is no reason to take action against Maurice,' said a spokesman for the governing body. 'With every ambassador we do an immediate check with the doping department. In this case, they said, "No, we don't have anything."'
Boldon, who retired in 2004 and is now coaching Saudi Arabia's Olympic team and working as a television commentator, is angry that no one from HSI has contacted him for four months or offered an explanation about a story in the New York Times last Sunday that claimed Greene had been buying drugs. Greene, who has never tested positive, denies the allegation, although he does admit paying for products for other members of the training group.
In the 'Boldon letter', the writer refers sarcastically to Greene as 'GOAT' - the tattoo on his arm that stands for 'Greatest Of All Time' - and claims that the revelations 'now taint everyone who has worked with you [Smith], even if they decided not to go this DRUG route. I might have an ounce of respect left for either of the two of you, the "GOAT" or yourself, if you had called me up when this first broke, to at least attempt to explain - like MEN - who are supposedly down for each other, do. You knew I knew, and yet both of you have done what you do best. Huddle in a corner and hide.'
As is inevitable with the world's fastest man, rumours always surrounded Greene and how he achieved his performances, but Boldon was very quick to defend his training partner, including on one occasion when the 1996 Olympic 100m gold medallist Donovan Bailey, who Greene succeeded as champion and world record holder, cast doubts about him.
'It's not like I didn't spend the past 13 years defending anyone who dared to talk about anyone in my camp or in my group,' the letter says. 'I never did that, right? Donovan opened his mouth to DARE talk about my "boy" Maurice, and I was on him in a flash, why because when you are down, when you have each other's backs, that is what REAL MEN do - they back each other up... Donovan was right too. My bad for thinking that I could trust any of you or believe a word you said.'
Greene is one of three Olympic champions Smith has coached, but a dark cloud was cast over his training group in July 2004 when Larry Wade, a 110m hurdler, tested positive for the anabolic steroid nandrolone and was banned for two years, despite the support offered to him by Boldon.
'I vouched for everyone,' the letter says. 'When Larry's Rectus humongus [sic] went down (of course that mystery positive of his isn't so mysterious now, is it?) it was my house that I called the meeting to, because if one was going through anything WE ALL WERE.'
Among the other clients Heredia, a former Mexican discus thrower, allegedly supplied drugs to were the training group of Trevor Graham, who coached Tim Montgomery and Marion Jones, both of whom have admitted taking performance-enhancing drugs and have subsequently been stripped of their Olympic medals and records. They are now serving prison sentences after pleading guilty to involvement in a scheme involving fraudulent cheques.
Heredia agreed to be a co-operating witness three years ago into an inquiry into performance-enhancing drugs, originally triggered by investigations into Balco, when investigators confronted him with evidence of his drug trafficking and money laundering. Since then Heredia says he has provided prosecutors with documentation and with the names of many elite track athletes and Olympic medal winners, including Greene. Prosecutors have said he is a reliable witness.
Graham is charged with three counts of making false statements to federal agents and his case is due to start on 19 May. He claims he is innocent and that he has never met Heredia.
Conte has alleged that Smith encouraged Graham, who was based in Raleigh, North Carolina, to send a syringe with traces of the designer anabolic steroid THG to the United States Anti-Doping Agency in 2003, a move that accelerated the US government's ongoing investigation into the San Francisco-based company.
Conte, who recently completed a jail sentence and a probation period and is now writing a tell-all book, said Smith and Graham conspired against him because Chambers was following a drugs schedule drawn up for him by Balco and was threatening Greene's position at the top of the world 100m rankings.
'I was working with sprinter Dwain Chambers, who was consistently beating Maurice and Tim Montgomery, who was coached by Trevor at the time,' Conte said. 'It's my opinion that John and Trevor did what they did to me and the athletes purely out of competitive jealousy. It certainly wasn't done as a noble deed.'
A fierce rivalry developed between Smith and Graham's training groups that reached its height in 2002 when Montgomery broke Greene's world record for the 100m. But Montgomery later became one of 10 athletes, along with Jones, coached by Graham who were caught or implicated in drugs scandals.
'You are an older Trevor Graham - PERIOD - on a different coast of the USA - and that isn't easy for me to say, because you know what I think about Trevor,' says the letter to Smith allegedly written by Boldon. 'You think running to West Angeles Church every time you are about to get caught will solve something? I went to West Angeles for 10 years and probably saw you twice. God has a message for you, JS, "Don't give drugs to people's children! Steer them away from it if they ask you, too!"'
Heredia alleges that Greene stopped ordering banned drugs from him after finishing third in the 100m in the Athens Olympics, a race won by Justin Gatlin - another Graham-coached athlete who later tested positive - and being beaten on the last leg of the 4x100m by Mark Lewis-Francis as Britain claimed the gold medal, because he was fearful that the investigation into Balco had become so wide-ranging. It was the last major medal won by an athlete coached by Smith.
'Everything around you is withering and/or dying,' the writer taunts Smith in his letter. 'How can that be? You have won not a single medal that matters since 2004. Is it because you have sowed nothing but poison and deceit your entire life, and now the brief stay you had "at the top" is now over?
'Say what you want about me and my failure to win the BIG ones, but I did it cleanly, and I can look you or anyone else in the face, not to mention myself in the mirror, for the rest of my life. I know that, and so DO YOU.... John Smith the great "sprint guru" is nothing but the emperor with no clothes. No, wait a minute, we know you can coach someone to 9.86 and 19.77 [Boldon's personal best times for the 100m and 200m]. The rest I can't vouch for.'
This, however, is not the first time that Smith's name has been so closely linked with drugs. Charlie Francis testified at the Canadian government inquiry held after Ben Johnson, whom he coached, had tested positive at the 1988 Olympics that Smith had told him that he was using the steroid Dianabol. Francis subsequently repeated the allegation in his book Speed Trap, which was published in 1990. Smith denied the allegation.
'This case in the NY Times is not some mistake, some "oops" moment, some mis-step, some one-time weakness, it's a pattern, and going back to the stuff written about you in "Speed Trap" after 1988... Almost 20 years later nothing has changed,' the 'Boldon' letter-writer claims.
'Let me cut to the chase, as it concerns your ultimate betrayal, as you doped my competition and my team-mates while professing to the world (and, of course, to me) that you were the "drug-free coach". When you see me somewhere, just pretend you don't. You are dead to me.'
Boldon was unavailable for comment when Observer Sport tried to contact him, but last week he did speak to a Greek website he writes a column for. 'One thing is clear, that the evidence and the facts will show someone to be a fraud and someone will be vindicated,' he told them. 'I will make no further comment regarding this case until such time.'
Smith and Greene were also unavailable for comment.
