Marion Lois Jones, also known as Marion Jones-Thompson, is an American former world champion track-and-field athlete and former professional basketball player. She won three gold medals and two bronze medals at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia, but was later stripped of her medals after admitting to lying to federal investigators about her knowledge of performance enhancing drugs.
Timothy Montgomery is an American former track sprinter who specialized in the 100-meter dash. In 2005, he was stripped of his records—including a now-void men's 100-meter world record of 9.78 seconds set in 2002—after being found guilty of using performance-enhancing drugs as a central figure in the BALCO scandal. Since retiring from athletics, he has been tried and convicted for his part in a New York–based check fraud scheme and for dealing heroin in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia.
The 7th World Championships in Athletics, a World Athletic Championships event held under the auspices of the International Association of Athletics Federations, were held at the Estadio Olímpico de Sevilla, Seville, Spain, between the August 20 and August 29.
The 6th World Championships in Athletics, under the auspices of the International Amateur Athletic Federation, were held at the Olympic Stadium, Athens, Greece between August 1 and August 10, 1997. In this event participated 1882 athletes from 198 participant nations. Despite several attempts to sabotage,Athens used the successful organization of the World Championships to prove their capacity during the next IOC Session held the following month in Lausanne as a triumph and key event during the final stretch of the process to choose the city who hosted 2004 Summer Olympics. The success of the event showed the Greece abilities and readiness to organize large-scale, international sporting events.
Victor Conte Jr. is an American musician and businessman who was the founder and president of Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO), which is now defunct. BALCO was a sports nutrition center in California. In the late seventies Conte played bass with funk / R&B group Tower of Power, appearing on the band's 1978 release We Came to Play!.
Antonio Pettigrew was an American sprinter who specialized in the 400 meters.
The 4 × 400 metres relay or long relay is an athletics track event in which teams consist of four runners who each complete 400 metres or one lap, totaling 1600 meters. It is traditionally the final event of a track meet. The first leg and the first bend of the second leg are run in lanes. Start lines are thus staggered over a greater distance than in an individual 400 metres race; the runners then typically move to the inside of the track. The slightly longer 4 × 440 yards relay, on an Imperial distance, was a formerly run British Commonwealth and American event, until metrication was completed in the 1970s.
Kelli White is an American former sprinter. She won two gold medals in the World Championships in Paris in 2003. However, on June 18, 2004, she was stripped of her medals, because she tested positive on a drug test. She retired from professional track in 2006.
The 9th IAAF World Indoor Championships in Athletics were held in the National Indoor Arena in Birmingham, UK from 14 to 16 March 2003. It was the first time the Championships had been held in the UK. There were a total number of 589 participating athletes from 133 countries.
Troy McIntosh is a male sprinter from The Bahamas. He represented his nation at the Summer Olympics in 1996 and 2000. He had his greatest achievements with the Bahamian 4×400 metres relay team. He won the bronze medal in that event at the 2000 Summer Olympics after the United States team were retrospectively disqualified due to doping. This same disqualification, of Antonio Pettigrew, also resulted in Bahamas taking the gold medal at the 2001 World Championships in Athletics, where McIntosh was initially a silver medallist.
Regina Jacobs is an American former middle-distance runner from Los Angeles. She had an extended career that included two IAAF World Championships in Athletics silver medals and an indoor world championship at the age of 39. Three months later, her career ended after winning what would have been a fifth straight National Championship in the 1500 meters when she was disqualified and banned for doping related to the BALCO scandal.
The 9th IAAF World Cup in Athletics was an international track and field sporting event sponsored by the International Association of Athletics Federations. It was hosted by Madrid, September 21–22, 2002, in the Estadio La Peineta.
In 2010 there was no obvious, primary athletics championship, as neither the Summer Olympics nor the World Championships in Athletics occurred in the year. The foremost championships to be held in 2010 included: the 2010 IAAF World Indoor Championships, 2010 European Athletics Championships, 2010 African Championships in Athletics, and Athletics at the 2010 Commonwealth Games.
Ramon Clay is a retired American sprinter who specialized in the 200 metres.
The 2003 USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships was organised by USA Track & Field and held from June 19 to 22 at the Cobb Track & Angell Field in Palo Alto, California. The four-day competition served as the national championships in track and field for the United States and also the trials for the 2003 World Championships in Athletics.
The 100 metres at the World Championships in Athletics has been contested by both men and women since the inaugural edition in 1983. It is the second most prestigious 100 m title after the 100 metres at the Olympics. The competition format typically has two or three qualifying rounds leading to a final between eight athletes. Since 2011 a preliminary round has been held, where athletes who have not achieved the qualifying standard time compete to enter the first round proper.
The 4×100 metres relay at the World Championships in Athletics has been contested by both men and women since the inaugural edition in 1983. It is the second most prestigious title in the discipline after the 4×100 metres relay at the Olympics. The competition format typically has one qualifying round leading to a final between eight teams. As of 2015, nations can qualify for the competition through a top eight finish at the previous IAAF World Relays event, with the remaining teams coming through the more traditional route of ranking highly on time in the seasonal lists. This system was modified due to the postponement of 2023 World Athletics Relays to 2024: therefore, the eight teams directly qualified are those of the 2022 World Championships, in Eugene, completed by eight more 2022-2023 top lists' teams.
The 4 × 400 metres relay at the World Championships in Athletics has been contested by both men and women since the inaugural edition in 1983. The competition features three formats in relation to gender: men, women, and mixed. The 2019 edition added in the mixed competition. The format utilizes one set of heats qualifying the top 8 into a final.
