How did Michael Johnson feel as he read reports of Antonio Pettigrew’s testimony in a San Francisco courtroom last week? Pettigrew was a witness in the case against athletics coach Trevor Graham, who is accused of lying to federal investigators. During his testimony, Pettigrew explained he had been put in touch with a drug supplier, Angel “Memo” Heredia, by Graham and that he continued receiving banned substances from Heredia until 2001.

Johnson would have paid attention to Pettigrew’s evidence because not only were they rivals on the track, they raced together on US relay teams. Regarded as the greatest of all 400m runners, Johnson’s final race was the 4x400m relay in Sydney on September 30, 2000, where he anchored the US team to a clear victory. Pettigrew ran the second leg in that final and played his part in Johnson receiving the baton with an insurmountable lead.

By his own admission, Pettigrew was doping at the time. One wonders if Johnson now feels that the last medal is tainted and unworthy of a place among his collection of 19 championship golds. The other two members of that 400m relay team in Sydney were the twins, Calvin and Alvin Harrison, who were given doping bans in 2004 for offences committed after the 2000 Olympics. Calvin tested positive for modafinil, a stimulant once used by athletes connected to the Balco laboratory run by Victor Conte, while Alvin was shown to have used EPO, the steroid tetrahydro-gestrinone (THG), testosterone, human growth hormone, insulin and modafinil. Alvin was given a four-year ban and became the first male athlete to be sanctioned without having failed a drug test.

Johnson will know how this story is likely to unfold. Jim Scherr, chief executive of the United States Olympic Committee, weighed up Pettigrew’s evidence. “If an athlete who ran in the finals knowingly and purposefully engaged in cheating, the medals won by the entire team are tarnished and, in our view, should be returned.”

There is a precedent for this sorry episode. At the same 2000 Olympics in Sydney, the women’s 4x400m relay was won by a US team containing Marion Jones, who has since admitted she doped before the Games. Last month the International Olympic Committee (IOC) stripped that US team of its medals. They must now do the same with the US men’s team and declare second-placed Nigeria as the gold medallists.

Johnson never tested positive for doping, nor has he been implicated in any doping controversy, and since his retirement in 2000 he has been consistently critical of those who use drugs. What does he now think about the gold he won in that Sydney relay? At least one of his teammates was cheating at the time and given how well the Harrisons were running in Sydney, he may wonder if they started down the doping road before the 2000 Olympics. The bottom line is clear: that 4x400m gold medal is tarnished and worthless. The only good that can come from this is that by returning it, Johnson can say he wants nothing to do with any award or victory achieved with the help of drugs. It would be nice, too, if the 400m world record-holder returned that medal voluntarily, before the IOC order him to.

Of course, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) and the IOC dislike talk of medals being returned and history being rewritten because there is no end to the problem. If all doping-affected results were reevaluated and the cheats removed, there would be no time to organise the Games. When the IOC decided to strip the US women of their medals in the 4x100m and 4x400m relays (Jones was also in the 4x100m relay team) from the Sydney Olympics, they took a decision that involved more than 30 athletes in a process that would see some lose their medals, others change the colour of theirs and still others receive medals more than seven years after they had missed out.

Three months before the start of the Beijing Olympics, the Graham trial is the last thing sports officials wanted. The Balco investigation is continuing to do significant damage to sport’s battered image. It is not just athletics that has suffered in the fallout to the Balco investigation but also baseball and American football.

Such was the cynicism that underpinned Conte’s operation and the sheer scale of his doping programme that the investigation was always going to have serious consequences, but the situation has been exacerbated by athletes and their coaches believing they could tell the same lies to federal investigators that for years they have been telling to the public. That is why Jones ended up in prison, why the US cyclist Tammy Thomas awaits sentencing after her perjury conviction, why Graham is facing perjury charges.

Graham’s case is typical. He has been one of America’s most successful track coaches and when it was discovered he was the person who tipped off US antidoping authorities about Conte’s operation in San Francisco, he was praised for what seemed a strong anti-doping statement. But during the course of the Balco investigation, federal agents received information that suggested Graham was helping his athletes to dope.

They interviewed him and agreed to his request for immunity from prosecution provided he was truthful. According to his testimony, Graham was never involved in doping. After speaking with other witnesses, in particular the Mexican-born steroid dealer Heredia, the investigators concluded that Graham had lied and charged him with perjury. For the first four days of last week, a jury in San Francisco heard the case against Graham and it was substantial. He had told the government investigators he had never met Heredia and had not spoken to him on the phone since 1997. A photograph showed Heredia and Graham together in Heredia’s apartment in 1996, and phone records indicated Graham had spoken more than 100 times to the supplier since 1997.

If the prosecution’s case against Graham rested solely on Heredia’s evidence, it would be difficult to prove because Heredia supplied drugs to many athletes and was not truthful in his initial interview with federal officers. The case against Graham, however, rests as much on the testimony of his former athletes. Pettigrew testified that Graham suggested he should consider using EPO and human growth hormone and that he would introduce him to a supplier (Heredia), while Jerome Young, also a member of America’s tarnished 4x400m team at the 2000 Olympics, told the court Graham introduced him to EPO. Dennis Mitchell, who won 4x100m gold for America at the 1992 Olympics, testified that Graham injected him with human growth hormone and Duane Ross, a retired American hurdler, said he fell out with Graham because he refused to use performance-enhancing drugs.

The case resumes on Tuesday.

Explore More Sport

• Athletics

• Boxing

• Cycling

• Sailing

• US Sport