The biggest doping scandal in sporting history returns to the spotlight of the courtroom today.
The Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO) steroid distribution case has implicated a range of sports including baseball, cycling, swimming and, most of all, athletics, since the discovery of the previously undetectable drug tetrahydrogestrinone (THG) late last year.
BALCO founder Victor Conte, vice-president James Valente, personal trainer Greg Anderson and athletics coach Remy Korchemny all pleaded their innocence when they were indicted earlier this year on charges of distributing illegal drugs and money laundering.
But the case really erupted when the United States Anti-Doping Agency accused BALCO of being the source of THG.
Today US district court judge Susan Illston will preside over a pre-trial hearing where she could consider a defence motion to dismiss the case or set a trial date for the four men accused of distributing performance-enhancing drugs to elite athletes.
Sprinters Kelli White and Alvin Harrison were banned for the use of THG and other drugs not after positive tests but on the basis of materials gleaned in the BALCO investigation.
USADA is still seeking to sanction others, including 100m world record-holder Tim Montgomery and US sprinters Chryste Gaines and Michelle Collins - again, not because of positive tests but because of information from the BALCO case.
Athletes who have had no formal accusations brought against them have also been embroiled in the scandal, as sprint queen Marion Jones and baseball's Bonds and Gary Sheffield have seen their names linked to the affair.
However, Conte and the other defendants in the criminal case
have challenged the prosecution's evidence, denying that Conte and Valente admitted giving banned drugs to sports figures.
"First the feds lie and then they leak," Conte said in an angry e-mail to the San Jose Mercury News earlier this month. "They fabricated evidence and then they illegally leak it to the media."
While there is no proof that the government leaked evidence to the press, such supposedly confidential information as Montgomery's grand jury testimony did find its way into print.
In repsonse to the charges of misconduct, prosecutors have filed hundreds of documents supporting their handling of the case.
