The traditional route to organising an interview with a professional athlete for a newspaper is to go through his or her agent. And generally you will find yourself granted between 20 minutes and an hour with them, the time allotted inversely proportionate to their importance/celebrity/wealth.
Interviewing the sprinter Tim Montgomery for The Times sports pages last week was a different proposition. I went through the warden’s office of his prison to fix it up, and given that he has another eight years on his hands inside, Montgomery pretty much had all the time in the world. Which on this occasion added up to four hours.
The rise and fall of Montgomery is an astonishing tale. The ultimate in riches to rags. But it kind of helped that he was in prison, serving such a very long sentence. It is hard for anyone to admit the errors of their ways but I got the impression that there is so much in Montgomery’s life that is so irretrievable that it was not such a tough proposition for him to be completely frank about the depths to which he sunk.
Montgomery is in the Federal Prison Camp in the city which shares his name, Montgomery, Alabama, serving two sentences. One: 46 months for his part in a fraud which involved banking counterfeit cheques. And two: five years for dealing heroine.
So that is a lot to get through long before you even get on to the fact that he spent the prime of his life as a world-class athlete taking performance-enhancing drugs.
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But what shocked me most were not the tales of violence he recounted from some of his previous prisons - the knife crime, the gangs, the riots – and nor was it the openness about the lie that was his athletic life and the ease with which he and his former partner Marion Jones duped the wider world.
The biggest shock was to hear him so completely at home with his amorality. No excuse, no hard-luck story, no blame attached. He looked me in the eye and actually smiled at the concept that his actions might have been tempered by a guilty conscience.
The strange thing was that I quite liked him. I warmed to him. Need it be said, I’ll throw disapproval in there too. But he did swear that he was a reformed character. Prison was so bad, he said, “I can’t understand why anyone would come back a second time.”
So, the question I have been asked a number of times: do you think he will stay straight when he is free?
Three points: 1) His release date is January 6 2016 but 2014 looks more likely and he has an appeal to make it even earlier. Whatever transpires, no one can tell what will be his state of mind when he is at last released.
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2) He found it so phenomenally easy to break the laws of his sport and the laws of his land that he surely has it in him to do it again.
3) This is very significant. He detests his inability to play his part as a father to his four children. He likes to be considered a “man”. But having his kids visit him in prison does not sit with his concept of manliness.
If you asked me to put money on it either way, I would say: he’ll stay clean. But the odds would be pretty even.
What was the prison like?
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Not like The Shawshank Redemption, as many including myself had/have wondered. FPC Montgomery is a minimum security prison meaning that no one is serving a sentence more than ten years. It means the prisoners are given a lot of trust. A lot of them, Montgomery for one, work on the airbase to which the prison is attached. At present, he sweeps leaves.
So: no clunking prison doors. No men in chains. No prison clich?s. No big intimidating walls, barbed wire, or Colditz watch towers. But have no doubt, Montgomery detests being inside. He knows that FPC Montgomery is as reasonable as life inside will ever get for him, but he detests it nevertheless. The picture he painted was of eternal insecurity. You never know who you can trust inside, who might turn on you, who might suddenly be violent.
Why did he do the interview?
1) If you believe his word, then it is to show the world that he has learned his lesson, to help other young people learn from it so they do not make the same errors themselves. This is a path trodden by a small number of confessed dopers in sport, like a grand form of self-sacrifice. A general rule, though, is that they only take it when it is the only route left open. But though it is also a very decent sentiment, I am not totally convinced that Montgomery has become an overnight altruist.
2) He has an ego, a big one. That is not surprising; pretty much every world-class sprinter that ever lived had a gargantuan ego, that is what they are all about, man versus man, toe to toe, I am better that you, I am the best, the fastest in the world. Montgomery’s ego is obviously barely ever fed in the prison the way it was when he was a star and it would be only natural if he is missing the attention. He told me proudly about how HBO had done a programme on him and how it had been so popular, it had been re-run a number of times. As with his interview with The Times, the programme was not about his success but about his failure. Nevertheless, the idea that media organisations from around the world want to come and see him still pushes his vanity button.
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3) Personal responsibility does come into it in a strange kind of way. Whatever Montgomery does in his prison after-life, whether he makes a success or a failure out of himself, he has one big meal-ticket within him. This is his life story, he can sell it in whatever form he likes though it would most likely come first of all as a book.
It is well nigh impossible to see that happening while he is in prison, so it remains in his interest to keep his story alive. In other words, when given the chance, keep people remembering him; keep them shocked. One day it might pay for him.
A question to end on
Tim Montgomery’s life spans the highs and lows wider than any other sportsman. He broke the world 100m, he broke his life. Has anyone else gone quite that far? Start with Mike Tyson and see if you can go any further ...