Ex-Track Coach's Trial Raises Unseemly Issues

More pain may be yet to come.

The biggest name to surface in the run-up to the Graham trial has been Maurice Greene, the former 100-meter champion world record holder who won two gold medals at the 2000 Olympics. Heredia told investigators Greene wired him $14,000 in 2003 for a massive assortment of performance-enhancing substances: testosterone cream, a peptide hormone called Gonadorelin, adrenalin, erythropoietin, human growth hormone and injectable IGF-1, according to his December 2006 interview with Novitzky and other agents, a copy of which The Washington Post obtained.

He claimed Greene "got scared" in 2004 and stopped working with him, but that he remained in touch with Greene's coach, John Smith, until days before the interview.

Greene, who never flunked a drug test, has denied using drugs and the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), the world track and field governing body, has stood by him. Greene's attorney, Emanuel Hudson, denied the allegations when contacted about them in January, calling them "ludicrous," but has not returned recent calls.

Smith said in a statement he "does not condone the use of performance-enhancing substances or other banned products."

Heredia, meantime, admitted to investigators he was seeking a book deal. He has claimed to several media outlets that he helped dozens of athletes win competitions and medals.

Besides Heredia, a former thrower from Mexico, more than a half-dozen former athletes have been identified in court records by the prosecution as potential witnesses. They include Antonio Pettigrew, who won a gold medal in the 4x400 relay at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney; Jerome Young, a member of the same relay team who was already stripped of his medal because of a doping offense; Calvin Harrison, another member of the 2000 Olympic relay team who served a doping ban in connection to his involvement with Balco; and Dennis Mitchell, who won a gold, silver and bronze medal at the 1992 and 1996 Summer Games but served a drug ban after a positive test for testosterone in 1998.

Prosecutors hope disclosures from Graham's former athletes will convince the jury Graham lied when he said during a June 8, 2004, that he never referred any athletes to Heredia or provided them with drugs from Heredia.

Graham seems to hope unearthing the extensive nature of Heredia's clientele will support the theory that he was set up by vindictive dealers and athletes whose industry was short-circuited in 2003, when he sent in a syringe full of steroids to USADA, a quasi-government agency created in 2000 to oversee anti-doping matters in the United States.

The syringe helped ignite the federal investigation in which Graham is now ensnared. He faces up to 15 years in prison and $750,000 in fines for three counts of making false statements to federal agents.

As the trial proceeds, America's latest crop of track and field stars, whose Olympic trials are scheduled for late June, will continue perhaps an even tougher battle of perception. A handful of the sport's most highly regarded stars, including Allyson Felix, Tyson Gay, Brian Clay and Lauryn Williams, announced last month they had signed on to a program of additional and uncommonly rigorous blood and urine testing from USADA. Nicknamed "Project Believe," the effort is designed to help athletes prove they are drug-free.

Which might be the biggest task of all as the clean-up continues, according to outgoing USA Track and Field Chief Executive Officer Craig Masback, who has accepted a position with shoe giant Nike.

Said Masback to an audience of Princeton students in late April: "The public and media have come to say, 'Why should I believe anything that happens in your sport?' "