Athletics: Steroids plea-bargain a bitter pill to swallow

MONTREAL - The head of the World Anti-Doping Agency fears top athletes implicated in one of sport's biggest drug scandals will slip away unpunished after key figures in the investigation struck plea bargain deals with prosecutors.

Under the deal, Balco owner Victor Conte, who has confessed to providing performance-enhancing drugs to some of world's most famous athletes, will admit to one count of conspiracy to distribute steroids, and a money-laundering count. Other charges will be dropped.

The pleas, however, could spare top athletes the embarrassment of testifying in a trial in September, leaving many questions surrounding the scandal unanswered.

"Somebody who systematically tried to destroy the whole basis of sport by helping athletes and their coaches to cheat gets to walk away with a four-month sentence," agency chief Dick Pound said at the world swimming championships.

"An athlete who got caught doing the same sort of thing gets two years. There's certainly a mixed message.

"Part of it is the difference between the regularity system of sport and the criminal justice system, but the message is not that encouraging.

"It kind of ends up with a whimper and a very light sentence that many think is not commensurate with the gravity of the offences."

More than a dozen elite athletes have been suspended since the US Anti-Doping Agency identified Balco as the source of a previously undetectable steroid in 2003.

Many more have had their reputations badly damaged. They include San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds and sprinters Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery.

The plea agreements appear to close the possibility of open-court testimony by Bonds, Jones and more than 30 other athletes who appeared before a closed-door federal grand jury investigating the case.

Pound would like some answers.

"It's particularly frustrating that some of the evidence may not be available, and very frustrating that part of the plea bargain did not include helping to clarify which athletes have been involved.

"For instance, he [Conte] and Marion Jones have diametrically opposite positions on doping.

"She says 'I never, ever used anything'. That's been her position all along. He said, 'I sat beside her, and I dialled up a shot of HGH, and I watched her inject it'.

"One of them is certainly lying, and I just hope we can find out which one it is."

- REUTERS