Athletics: Golden couple's dangerous liaison

Threat of European ban as link with Johnson's old coach casts shadow over sprinters

On the sprint strip in the middle of the indoor athletics centre at York University in Toronto a powerfully built man of 41 can occasionally be seen going through his paces. If his face seems familiar there is a good reason. Once upon a time Ben Johnson was the fastest man in the world. Ten years after his second failed drugs test, after he was banned from competition for life, he still likes to keep himself in shape by working out at his local track. It is not known whether he has bumped into the man who is now the fastest on the planet, but the worlds of Tim Montgomery and Ben Johnson have already collided.

The impact could hardly have more ironic reverberations for the sport of track and field, which this week returns to the spotlight with the launch of the international indoor season. The outdoor season last year drew towards a conclusion in September with Montgomery unexpectedly setting a new 100m world record at the IAAF Grand Prix final in Paris. The significance of the time the American recorded at the Stade Charlety, 9.78sec, was that it removed from the record books the figures 9.79, the tainted time Johnson recorded at the Seoul Olympics in 1988 and which Maurice Greene matched in Athens in 1999. The shadow of "Big Bad" Ben had finally been eclipsed. Or so it seemed.

Two months later, in mid-December, Montgomery and his girlfriend, Marion Jones, the fastest living woman, were spotted at the York University indoor track training under the watchful eye of Charlie Francis. Francis was the guru behind the rise of Johnson and behind his fall "from hero to zero in 9.79sec", as the headline in the Toronto Sun famously put it. It was Francis who put Johnson on a steroid regime that led to the positive test for stanozolol in the wake of the 9.79sec run in Seoul.

"Say it ain't so," the track world implored. And the management team behind the sport's "golden couple" insisted it wasn't. Montgomery and Jones had left their former coach, Trevor Graham, in Raleigh, North Carolina, it was announced, to work under the direction of Derek Hansen, a Canadian strength and conditioning expert. But then a photograph appeared in print of Francis preparing Jones and Montgomery for a training session at York University. The couple were reportedly spotted training in Hawaii over Christmas but are now back in Toronto. "They're here and they're working out five days a week with Charlie," a source close to the Francis camp confirmed.

Montgomery and Jones spent much of last week attempting to dodge the attentions of a reporter from L'Equipe, the French daily sports paper. Both have refused to comment on their liaison with Francis. Francis himself has declined to pass public comment but has told friends that he has been giving Montgomery detailed training advice since last spring. Francis has been banned from coaching Canadian track and field athletes since 1989, when he revealed to the Dubin Commission, the government inquiry launched after Johnson's Olympic disqualification, that the use of steroids had been central to his training group.

He is, however, free to coach athletes from other sports and from other countries. In fact, he runs a flourishing personal training service via his internet site, CharlieFrancis.com. The home page features a photograph of Johnson pulling clear of the opposition in Seoul and claims that following the Fast system – the Francis Advanced Speed Training programme – can achieve such "incredible results" as "9.97sec for 100m while easing down to the finish".

The site offers 60-minute telephone consultations with Francis for $145, around £90. It also features a chat forum with a nutrition section, the opening message on which last week was posted by a 15-year-old boy seeking information about "IGF1", Insulin Growth Factor 1, a metabolite of human growth hormone derived from deer-antler velvet.

The shopping pages also offer copies of Speed Trap, the book Francis published after his fall from grace. In it, he tells the tale of how he confronted the 19-year-old Johnson with the realities of life in the fast lane back in 1981. "It's pretty clear that steroids are worth approximately a metre at the highest levels," he relates. "Johnson could decide to set up his starting blocks at the same line as all the other competitors or set them up a metre behind them all. And obviously that would be an unacceptable situation for a top-level athlete."

Francis openly confesses to having been an advocate of chemically levelling the playing field since his own struggles to keep up with the world's fastest. He competed in the 100m for Canada at the 1972 Olympics, reaching the second round. His personal best was 10.39sec. In December 2001 he wrote in the magazine Testosterone: "Perhaps we really should give out medals to the scientists assisting the athletes. That'll never happen, of course. But make no mistake – the theme of modern sport regarding drug use remains 'business as usual'."

It might not, however, be business as usual for Montgomery and Jones this summer. They have apparently cancelled plans to train and compete in Australia, where athletics officials have raised concerns about their relationship with Francis. The directors of the seven Golden League meetings in Europe have met to express similar concerns and are considering the possibility of blackballing the double act of the world's fastest couple from the showpiece invitation events of the outdoor season. And the sport's governing body, the International Association of Athletics Federations, is worried about press conferences on the summer circuit being dominated by questions about Francis and drugs.

Not that being associated with the tainted side of the sport is anything new to Jones. As a 16-year-old high school prodigy she was suspended for failing to turn up for a test. Her stepfather hired a lawyer by the name of Johnnie Cochrane, who won the case for her reinstatement and whose most famous courtroom victory was fought on behalf of O J Simpson. Jones also stood by her man when the shot putter C J Hunter tested positive for steroids on the eve of the Sydney Olympics, although the couple divorced in 2001.

There are no grounds, of course, for suggesting that Jones or Montgomery have broken any track and field laws. Indeed, some would argue that they have made a smart move towards maximising their potential by hooking up with one of the world's foremost experts on sprint training. The baggage of Francis's history, and his publicly stated views, though, have placed them under a cloud.

After opening his indoor season with a 6.60sec clocking for 60m in Houston last weekend, Maurice Greene described Montgomery's change of coach as "a stupid mistake". The former world record holder, who races Britain's Dwain Chambers in Boston next Saturday and in New York the following Friday, added: "The only person Charlie Francis has coached is Ben Johnson and he got banned because of Charlie Francis. But people do things in desperate situations."

The old speed merchant who works out at York University bears testimony to that. Ben Johnson works as a personal trainer these days. "What else am I going to do?" he says. "Rob a bank?"