Evidence shown in a court here yesterday appeared to prove that Great Britain were cheated out of a gold medal at the 1997 World Championships in Athens. In the 4x400 metres relay, the United States won in a tight finish, with Britain 0.18sec behind in second. One of the Americans in that quartet was Antonio Pettigrew. The Britain four that day were Roger Black, Iwan Thomas, Jamie Baulch and Mark Richardson.

Yesterday in court, where Trevor Graham, Pettigrew's former coach, is facing charges of lying to federal investigators, Pettigrew gave evidence in which he admitted that he had been on a programme of banned performance-enhancing drugs, including human growth hormone (HGH) and erythropoietin (EPO), that he had been sent by Angel Heredia, a Mexican dealer. One of the pieces of evidence shown to the jury was a Fedex receipt sent by Heredia to Pettigrew that was dated July 17, 1997, the month before the World Championships.

So, the 4x400 metres gold in Athens becomes yet another of the medals that have been proved to have been won illegally. Pettigrew continued to receive drugs from Heredia until 2001, which suggests that the US relay team's golds at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 and at the World Championships in Seville in 1999 and Edmonton, Canada, in 2001 are tainted, too.

The IAAF, the international athletics federation, will thus be faced with issues of medal redistribution. The Sydney and Edmonton medals look particularly dirty, given that Jerome Young, who was also in those teams, also testified in court yesterday that he had been on performance-enhancing drugs during that period. Young was also the gold medal-winner in the 400 metres individual event at the Paris World Championships in 2003; that medal is another that he now looks unlikely to keep.

Young was also in the US team who narrowly beat Britain in 1997. However, there is no evidence to prove that he was on drugs at that time. In any case, present rules allow the IAAF to redistribute medals only within an eight-year period, which means that the British runners will receive gold medals only if Pettigrew, Young and their team, which included Michael Johnson, the world record-holder, hand them over voluntarily.

Black expressed his frustration yesterday at the rewriting of the history of his athletics career. “This won't affect my life,” he said. “The past is the past. If the IAAF wanted to send me a gold medal now, they'd be welcome. But I won't pursue it. What I could never have is the moment of crossing the line as an Olympic or world champion. No one could ever give me that; they could give me the medal, but not the feeling.”

Black also said that he was surprised and disappointed at Pettigrew, who also won gold ahead of Black's silver in the Tokyo World Championships in 1991, although there is no evidence that the victory was fuelled by drugs.

“At that level, because you're one of the best in the world, you respect the people you are running against,” Black said. “I didn't really know Young because our careers didn't overlap much. But Pettigrew I thought was clean because of his build and his consistency. I thought he'd worked hard to achieve what he achieved. I liked the guy.”

Pettigrew admitted lying to federal investigators, which could result in him facing similar charges to Graham and which he did, he said, to protect his family and his job as a track coach at the University of North Carolina. “I'm in it now and I have to face the consequences,” he said.

Pettigrew, like Young and Duane Ross, another athlete who testified here, explained how he had been introduced to performance-enhancing drugs by Graham, how Graham had pulled him aside at the track and told him that he should consider taking EPO and HGH and that he would introduce him to a supplier.

Young told the court that Graham gave him his first “box” of EPO and told him to inject it into his stomach. Ross told the court about the “control” that Graham liked to exert over his athletes and that he fell out with Graham because he refused to use banned substances. “He would often ask, ‘What are you taking?'” Ross said of Graham. “In my opinion, because I was not getting in line [with doping], it created a rift in our relationship.”

The case this week has cast further shadows over athletics. As Black said: “I just wonder, what was it like for these guys, operating in this way? You think, ‘Did they spend every day of their working lives working out what to take?' And maybe the rest of us who ran clean were a hell of a lot better than we thought we were.”

The case continues on Tuesday.

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