US sport on trial at Olympic showcase

HISTORICALLY a meeting with the sparkle and tension of the Olympic Games, this year's US trials, starting today, are a test not only of America's best but of the sport itself.

In a setting less than three hours' drive from the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO), alleged to be at the heart of a doping scandal which threatens to engulf the sport, the United States will pick its team for next month's Athens Olympics.

It is here that triple Olympic champion Marion Jones, returning after giving birth to her first child last year, will attempt to shake off a spring and early summer of disappointment and again make the US team in the 100m, 200m and long jump.

It is here that Olympic champion Maurice Greene will attempt to show he still the king of the 100m.

Veteran hurdlers Gail Devers and Allen Johnson will take their first steps towards more gold while emerging 1,500m runner Alan Webb and shot-putter Christian Cantwell will bid to make their first Olympic team.

Reminders of the BALCO scandal are not far away. Six athletes, including Jones's partner and 100m world record holder Tim Montgomery, will compete although they are awaiting hearings on doping charges. Four others, including world double sprint champion Kelli White, have been suspended for doping violations.

Even Jones, the sport's biggest female name, is under scrutiny by the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) although she has never failed a doping test and has denied ever using performance-enhancing drugs.

"We've had trying times as an organisation over the past 25 years," USA Track & Field chief executive Craig Masback told his board of directors this week.

"But nothing is more challenging or dispiriting then the situation in which we find ourselves. Instead of a daily celebration of our great sport and our outstanding athletes, newspapers around the world are delivering news of scandal and shame related to some of our athletes and coaches."

Masback blamed the scandal on "a small sub-culture of cheating athletes and coaches" whom he said believe "that using performance-enhancing substances was an acceptable route to success".

The team for Athens will comprise the top three finishers in each event, provided they have met the Olympics qualifying standard.

The trials are not a place for the faint-hearted. Ask Michael Johnson. At the start of the 2000 Olympic year, the Texan with the upright running style was the defending 200m champion and the world record holder.

He was scheduled to run against 1999 world champion Maurice Greene at the US trials in Sacramento in a race heralded as an appetiser for the Sydney Olympics final.

Instead, neither man finished the race, both pulling up before the line. Under the inflexible US rules which award Olympic places to the first three only, neither made the 200m, although Greene went on to win the 100m gold and Johnson retained the 400m title.

"Nothing is guaranteed, nothing is promised when you get to the Olympic trials," said Tyree Washington, who himself missed out on the 400m for Sydney after developing a respiratory infection.