IS MAURICE Greene for real? My guess is it's either that or he was just plain out of sync while defending himself against doping allegations levelled this past weekend by one Angel Guillermo Heredia.

Heredia's another witness in the United States' government probe of doping in sports in that country. The man says he advised and supplied banned substances to athletics coach Trevor Graham and his athletes, including Greene and Marion Jones. Graham also coached Tim Montgomery.

Greene, who has never previously been linked to doping, admitted meeting Heredia but says he did not receive or use any drugs.

Refuting the claims, this is what Greene was quoted as saying in a report carried in the Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper: "I have met with a lot of people who wanted me to try this and try that. "Everyone wanted me to work with them. But me getting anything or doing anything? I have not.

"My stance has always been that there is no place in sport for drug users. I have always said that you should be banned for life if you come up positive, even once. I stand by that."

Now here's the eye-opener.

He also said he paid for items for the athletes in his training group, but didn't know what he was paying for.

Greene said: "Our group was very close and things always came up.

"I would pay for stuff and not care what it was. I've paid for things for other people."

I must be dreaming or Greene wasn't fully awake when he made that response. How generous! I certainly want to become a part of Maurice's group of friends so he can just pay for stuff for me like that. Anything!

Poor friends

And remember, these are not poor friends. These are athletes at the very top of the game who were raking in big bucks for the stupendous performances, and times, that left their competitors and ordinary folk like ourselves in awe.

These included a person like Montgomery, who once held the 100m world record after reducing Greene's benchmark by 0.01 second to 9.78 seconds in September 2002. He was charged with using illegal performancing-enhancing drugs by the United States Anti Doping Agency (USADA), even though he never returned a positive result. He testified that he had received steroids and human growth hormone (THG) during the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (BALCO) scandal that rocked US athletics. Montgomery was eventually sentenced to a two-year ban by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) after challenging USADA's four-year stipulation. He then retired.

Another trainer partner, Jones, whose first child belongs to Montgomery, also retired in the face of a most shocking and embarrassing admission recently, that she had used performance-enhancing drugs. She has returned all her Olympic medals, and retired too.

Shocker

She, too, had never failed a drug test and denied ever taking illegal substances, only to shock the world with her admission at a courthouse earlier this year.

Now this Heredia, like the other athletes or agents who have testified, is not doing this because guilt has begun to nibble into his conscience. He actually agreed to be a cooperating witness when investigators confronted him with evidence of his own drug trafficking and money laundering.

So here's the deal, squeal and be pardoned. The man, in a report carried in the New York Times on Saturday, listed 12 Olympic medallists, including Greene, among his elite clients.

Of course, there's the denial of a well-decorated sprinting star, which is not only symptomatic, but automatic like all the other athletes ever branded as dope cheats.

Greene has five Olympic medals (two gold, one silver and two bronze), five World Championship gold medals, including the sprint double at Seville, Spain, in 1999, and he still holds the world indoor 60m world record.

The American has also recorded by far the most sub-10 100-metre clockings, an astonishing 52.

Jamaica's own Asafa Powell, who now holds the 100m world record of 9.74 seconds, is a distant second with 33 sub-10 clockings.

Record

At one time, Greene also held the record for the most wind-legal sub-10 clockings in one season, nine, in 1999 when he was at his best, the same year when he doubled in Seville, and also won a sprint relay gold medal.

Powell broke that record two years ago when he ran 12 wind-legal sub-10 clockings.

Greene is now one of the International Association of Athletics Federation's (IAAF) Goodwill Ambassadors for the upcoming Beijing Olympics this summer. And, of course, the IAAF is defending Greene against this claim.

"None of this is new. There is no reason to take action against Maurice," one of its spokesmen, Nick Davies, told the Associated Press.

"With every ambassador we do an immediate check with the doping department. In this case they said, 'no, we don't have anything'."

For a sport fighting to save its image, I guess the IAAF mounting a quickfire defence on Greene's behalf is not strange.

In the meantime, the US government investigation that has opened a can of worms continues. Greene's coach, Graham, is slated to testify soon and there might well be a day when Greene, or others, just happen to say some more things which will either tell if he's in sync or for real.