Dwain Chambers struck gold at the European Indoor Championships in Turin yesterday and then found himself embroiled in another twist to a sporting saga of drugs, debt and deceit.

As Chambers celebrated his first leading solo gold medal since 2002, winning the 60 metres in 6.46sec, his former drug supplier, Victor Conte, threw a hand grenade into the mix by claiming to The Times that he had received a $10,000 (now about £7,000) wire transfer from the sprinter’s management company in 2002.

Conte, the brains behind the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (Balco), was jailed for four months in 2005 after pleading guilty to distributing steroids. He is a discredited figure, but his knowledge of illegal doping as head of the Balco company included the supply of drugs to many top athletes, including Marion Jones.

Conte has told how he provided Chambers with the “full enchilada” of drugs. He said yesterday: “I do recall Dwain telling me in early 2002 that he talked with a member of his management team about the possibility of working with me and that he had revealed some of the specifics of my programme. I was not present during the conversation.

“However, I do know that a wire transfer of more than $10,000 was sent to me thereafter by someone at Dwain’s management company. It would seem that a reasonable person would know that a supply of legal nutritional supplements does not usually cost $10,000.”

John Regis, who was Chambers’s agent at Stellar Athletics, said it was possible that the money had been transferred, but denied any wrongdoing. “We would pay for Mr Chambers’s electricity and his gas,” he said. “He would tell us where to pay the money. I am yet to hear of an athlete who is honest enough to ring his agent and say, ‘Can you pay this man this much for my drugs’.” Regis has vehemently denied claims in Chambers’s autobiography, published today, that he was aware of his client’s drug taking. “He is trying to discredit me, but he’s a cheat who was in cahoots with another cheat,” Regis said.

The fallout from the serialisation of Chambers’s book, Race Against Me, continues. The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), the world governing body, has suggested that it will discuss at its next council meeting, in Berlin in a fortnight, whether the British sprinter has brought the sport into disrepute. Chambers owes the IAAF £120,000 in prize money earned while on drugs and it has been claimed that it can stop him running until he pays up, thus forcing his retirement. However, the IAAF cannot legally renege on the agreement it struck with Chambers by which he must pay back only 25 per cent of his earnings. “It’s in black and white,” Chambers said of the agreement. Nick Collins, Chambers’s lawyer, added: “We will not speculate on speculation.”

Fresh from winning the European indoor title, for which his only financial prize is a £2,500 UK Athletics bonus, Chambers returns to a state of limbo. Euromeetings, a group of 51 top promoters, has an unwritten guideline not to invite athletes who have served two-year drug bans to its events.

Chambers said people should not be suspicious of his times in Turin, which make him the third-fastest man over 60 metres. “They can raise their eyebrows,” he said. “I’m not failing drug tests. I’m doing my sport clean. I’ve always been a naturally fast athlete and it’s something I should have been doing naturally anyway.”

Chambers was the star turn of Britain’s worst performance at these championships since 1996 and defended his right to write a book. “All I’ve done is give a reflection of what’s happened in the past,” he said. “It has no reflection on the future.”