FanHouse Tim Montgomery

In an interview set to air Tuesday night on HBO's Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel, the former Olympic sprinter Tim Montgomery reveals that his performance-enhancing drug use went beyond just his involvement in BALCO.

Montgomery now says he took testosterone and human growth hormone before the Sydney Olympics, and as a result, he and his Olympic relay teammates -- Jon Drummond, Bernard Williams, Brian Lewis, Maurice Greene and Kenneth Brokenburr -- will likely be stripped of their gold medals.

"I have a gold medal that I'm sitting on that I didn't get with my own ability," Montgomery told Gumbel. "I'm not here to take away from anybody else's accomplishments, only my own. And I must say, I apologize to the other people that was on the relay team if that was to happen."

Everyone at the International Olympic Committee will, of course, condemn Montgomery, but they ought to take a lesson from Montgomery's admission: Olympic drug testing is woefully ineffective.

Montgomery (who also told Gumbel he regularly used marijuana) is just the latest example of the scores of Olympic athletes who made it through the Games without testing positive, only to admit much later that they were using drugs the whole time. Olympic athletes get away with using drugs because the drug testing doesn't work.

Track and field superstar Marion Jones was sentenced this morning to six months in prison for lying to federal investigators about the BALCO steroid ring and for lying about a check-fraud scheme involving her ex-boyfriend, the Olympic sprinter Tim Montgomery.

The sentence was handed down by U.S. District Judge Kenneth Karas, who had previously indicated that he would give Jones a stiffer sentence than prosecutors had recommended.

Lying to investigators is a serious crime, but the subject of athletes using steroids seems better suited for the International Olympic Committee and the track and field governing bodies to police for themselves, not for the federal government to get involved in.

Check fraud, however, has the potential to harm its victims, and that part of this story -- which has made fewer headlines than her involvement in BALCO -- makes it harder to feel sympathy for Jones. Montgomery, who is the father of Jones' son, has already been convicted of the check scam. By lying to U.S. Department of Homeland Security agents about it, Jones was trying to help Montgomery steal from innocent victims.

Jones must begin her sentence two months from today, March 11. The photo shows Jones, appearing to be in good spirits, entering Federal Court in White Plains, New York this morning.