admitted on Thursday in a federal courtroom here that he used banned performance enhancers from 1997 to 2001 after enjoying a long and successful career in which he passed all drug tests.
Of course, this is comes during years of investigations of pro athletes for performance enhancing drugs. Recently, many highly regarded track athletes have come under scrutiny for drug use. The list is long, and even includes olympic gold medal winners, including the above mentioned Pettigrew.
Others include Marion Jones, who at the tail end of her career finally tested positive after much speculation about steroid use. Jones was a track star at UNC. Her ex-husband, C.J. Hunter, tested positive 4 times for nandrolone during the summer of 2000. Although Hunter did not attend UNC, he was a coach there while Jones was a student (Hunter's Wikipedia profile).
I'm sure not all people involved with the UNC Track program are guilty of doping, but having three major pro athletes involved in some fashion certainly does put the program into unfavorable light, especially when one of those is a current coach. If the admins at UNC want to run a clean program, they need to take an immediate stance on these issues, and commission an immediate independent investigation of their athletes and coaches.
