White recalls drug shame

Discredited former world champion sprinter Kelli White has revealed the misery she felt while running as an undetected drug cheat.

Just days after securing a sprint double at last year’s World Championships in Paris, the American tested positive for modafinil which she insisted was prescribed for a sleeping disorder.

A positive test for modafinil carries a public warning and disqualification from the event where the failed test took place – in White’s case at the US national trials and the World Championships.

However, just days later, the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO) in California was raided and the first indications of a widespread doping scandal came to light – in which White was implicated.

The United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) then accused BALCO of being the source of the previously undetectable designer steroid tetrahydrogestrinone (THG), which had been discovered when a syringe containing a sample of the drug was anonymously sent to the Olympic drug-testing laboratory at the University of California Los Angeles.

It later emerged that Trevor Graham, former coach of Olympic multi-medallist Marion Jones and 100m world record holder Tim Montgomery, had sent the sample and had also accused BALCO founder Victor Conte of supplying a number of sportspeople with performance-enhancing drugs.

White was then confronted by the USADA with evidence she had also used steroids which had been invisible to regular detection methods.

In May she accepted a two-year ban and became the first person in USADA history to be punished without a positive test but on information gleaned from materials taken during raids on BALCO.

White lost all the titles and honours she secured since September 2000, almost €100,000 prize money from Paris and, according to her agent, more than €300,000 in endorsements, while she has been dropped by her sponsor Nike.

Conte was arrested along with Jim Valente, Greg Anderson and White’s former coach Remy Korchemny on charges of illegal steroid trafficking and money laundering.

The case returned to the spotlight this week as the quartet attended a pre-trial hearing ahead of a possible trial next March.

Conte then went on to make serious allegations about Jones – which her lawyers have vehemently refuted – in an ABC television programme to be aired tonight.

When White was handed her ban after admitting taking a cocktail of drugs, she immediately apologised for her actions, saying: “In doing this, I have not only cheated myself, but also my family, friends and sport.”

This week she revealed the full extent of her shame and pledged to return as a clean athlete.

She disclosed she had been unable to watch her races on television as the muscular frame she had developed was a physical reminder she had achieved success through cheating.

White told USA Today: “It was just so obvious something was going on, especially to people in the track world. I hate (the way I looked) because I became somebody totally different.”

The 27-year-old also revealed she had been unable to enjoy the success gained by using performance-enhancing drugs as she had compromised her principles to achieve it.

She said: “I felt that to do this (drug use), I had to become someone totally different than I was. I had to compromise my integrity, my value system. I knew it was so wrong. I look at that person and I’m like ‘That’s not Kelli White’.

“That’s not who I am, who I started out to be.”

White, who is now helping the USADA pursue other drugs cases, intends to return to athletics when her ban ends in May 2006 – although she will have to wait until the 2008 Games in Beijing for her first global outdoor competition.

She said: “When I do return I’ll be somebody different again. I’m sure I’ll like that person more than the 2003 person I became. It will be very, very different.”