Marion Jones was a casualty of drug abuse

The chilling warning of a drug-infested Olympics came Thursday from Victor Conte, the American musician-turned-businessman responsible for the Balco doping scandal.

Conte, whose San Francisco-based Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative supplied Dwain Chambers, Marion Jones, Tim Montgomery and a host of top athletes with the designer steroid THG, said that most track and field champions in Beijing would be using drugs.

Conte, who was jailed for dealing illegal drugs and money laundering, told in a radio programme that the authorities needed to do more out-of-competition drug testing. He gave his backing to Chambers, who remains banned from competing for Britain at the Olympics, but he pulled no punches in his assessment of the likely gold medallists in Beijing.

“I still believe that the overwhelming majority are going to be using performance-enhancing substances,” Conte said. “I truly believe that even the gold standard testing that they use at the Olympics is as easy as taking candy from a baby. Athletes use the duck-and-dive technique, use substances that are undetectable, and there isn’t enough testing.

“The most important changes that need to be made are improvements in the anti-doping policies and procedures. As long as it’s very easy to circumvent these, that breeds the mentality of ‘use or lose’.

“I still think there is rampant use of drugs out there. It can be cleaned up but they have to use people from the other side, like Dwain and myself, and use the knowledge that we’ve gained. Then, when athletes truly believe it is much more difficult to circumvent the testing, you’ll see far more performances by athletes who are doing it with hard work as opposed to chemical substances.”

Chambers, who served a two-year ban after testing positive for THG in 2003, was included in Britain’s team for next month’s world indoor championships in Valencia even though the selectors admitted that they did not want to pick him.

The disgraced sprinter has been left out of Saturday’s Norwich Union Grand Prix in Birmingham and faces being shunned by meetings on the European circuit.

According to Conte, however, Chambers deserved a second chance. “Dwain is a good guy,” he said. “He deserves to be forgiven and given another chance at earning a living.

“I used to be part of the problem. Dwain Chambers used to be part of the problem. I made a decision and Dwain did as well. It’s time to be part of the solution. He’s someone who can explain that to the young athletes of the future and maybe they can learn from his example.”

Meanwhile, last year’s European indoor 60m silver medallist Craig Pickering has withdrawn from the Birmingham meeting because of a virus.

It emerged that Pickering had been ill for 10 days and his hopes of proving that he, and not Simeon Williamson, should join Chambers in the 60m in Valencia could rest on him recovering in time to race in Paris a week Friday.

The British Olympic Association (BOA) insisted that no decision had been taken on whether athletes would be allowed to wear anti-air-pollution masks to combat conditions in Beijing.

The BOA has been testing the smog mask, which was commissioned by UK Sport and developed at Brunel University amid fears that some endurance events could be postponed if conditions in Beijing are not considered good enough.