Tim Montgomery and Marion Jones were cohorting with Conte

San Jose: Tim Montgomery was transformed from an unheralded sprinter into the world’s fastest man by an American drugs guru, a report has claimed.

The San Jose Mercury News claims Vincent Conte’s Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO) secretly assembled a team of five, including infamous Canadian coach Charlie Francis, to oversee a programme dubbed “project world record” designed to make Montgomery a world record-beater.

Montgomery ran a world best 9.78 seconds in Paris in September 2002.

The Mercury News also reported that Montgomery’s partner, Marion Jones, worked with Conte for just under two months prior to the 2000 Sydney Olympics where she won five medals.

Besides Francis, coach to disgraced 1988 Olympic champion Ben Johnson, the group included Conte, Montgomery, track coach Trevor Graham and strength coach and former Yugoslav bodybuilder Milos Sarcev.

Four of the five agreed to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Montgomery opted out of signing. The newspaper said it had seen corroborating documents and talked to sources who confirmed the existence of Project World Record.

Francis’ job was to create a workout regime while Graham, who helped coach Marion Jones to three gold medals at the Sydney Games, worked with Montgomery at the track.

As part of the programme, Montgomery was given the then undetectable designer steroid tetrahydrogestrinone (THG). Montgomery was told to take THG eight times in May 2001, including at the Modesto relays on May 12 and in Eugene, Oregon, two weeks later.

Montgomery has never tested positive and repeatedly denies taking banned performance-enhancing supplements.

“Tim Montgomery is a world-class runner who has never posted a dirty test in his life and is now being smeared by rumour and innuendo. There is no evidence that Tim Montgomery took a banned substance of any kind in his life,” Montgomery's lawyer Cristina Arguedas told The Mercury News.

Montgomery travelled to San Francisco to work with Greg Anderson, who is the trainer of baseball player Barry Bonds.

Anderson has been indicted on charges of distributing banned substances to athletes along with Conte, Kelli White’s track coach Remi Korchemny and BALCO executive James Valente. On Monday, Jones was interviewed by United States anti-doping agency officials who claim they have evidence supplied by the internal revenue service proving she was involved in the BALCO ring.

USADA admitted they had none of her old urine samples to re-test but said they had the right to ban athletes even without a failed drug test.

Jones is threatening to sue if she is prevented from taking part in the Athens Olympics without a failed drug test.