Who Is Marion Jones' Ex Partner, Tim Montgomery?
While Tim Montgomery is most known to the public for his relationship with runner Marion Jones and his involvement in the BALCO doping scandal, there's much more to know about the athlete. One of Montgomery's biggest achievements that put him on the international sporting map was his breaking of Olympian Maurice Greene's 100m world record, which Montgomery beat at the 2002 IAAF Grand Prix Final.
Just as he gained recognition for his unparalleled success, Montgomery's love life was an equal attention grabber. He was one-half of track and field's most elite couple with his then-girlfriend, Jones — who spectacularly won five medals at the 2000 Sydney Olympics – who was right by his side as he soaked in his record-breaking win.
Surprisingly, the pair didn't get along when they first met. "At one point we was hatin' each other," Montgomery told "Trans World Sport." "How did we get to this point where we lovin' each other?" The couple would go on to start a family together, and while it appeared that they had it all together, a doping scandal brought an end to the track stars' fairytale. Montgomery's Olympic glory days may be gone, but his ability to morph in the sports world hasn't wavered.
Tim Montgomery's NFL dreams were cut short
Long before he was a world record holder, Tim Montgomery was a budding football player. "I never went against anyone my own age. Was force to become a beast," he captioned a post on Instagram of newspaper clippings that documented his early football days. According to the article, Montgomery got started in the sport when he was just 6 years old. Back then, he outran the other children in the Little League, whose age minimum was 7 years old.
"If he ever seen daylight, it was a touchdown," his coach, Bobby Beattie, recalled. There were times when Montgomery's speed was challenged, but it wasn't enough to deter his dreams of playing in the National Football League. However, he only played football well into high school. Why, then, didn't he make it if he was so great?
The answer has everything to do with fractures. "I didn't really pursue it because I had broke my arm and my family couldn't afford doctor bills. I broke my thumb three times and my wrist one time," Montgomery revealed in his chat with "Trans World Sport." His mom, Marjorie Montgomery, encouraged him to play a less risky sport, which ultimately led him to sprinting.
He won bronze at the 1997 IAAF World Championships
Tim Montgomery got his first major solo win — as his relay team won silver at the 1996 Olympic Games — at the IAAF World Championships in Athens, Greece, in 1997. Montgomery competed in the 100m category and was up against tough opponents, including Canada's three-time world champion Donovan Bailey, Trinidad and Tobago sprinter Ato Boldon, and Montgomery's future Team USA teammate, Maurice Greene, who had set the world record in the 100m. But amongst this tough international competition, Montgomery held his own, finishing in third place and taking home the bronze medal.
Earlier that year, Montgomery and Greene had gone head to head at the USA Track & Field Championships. Greene secured a 9.90-second win while Montgomery followed shortly behind at 9.92 seconds, with just 0.02 seconds in between first and second place. When asked about how close their finishing times were, Greene told the press, "I felt it was going to be a close race in the beginning, but I just tried to relax and stay as comfortable as I am in the race." This all perpetuated a years-long friendly competition between two of the fastest sprinters in America, with Montgomery eventually overtaking Greene's 100m best in 2002.
He loved fast cars
Tim Montgomery had a formula for success that he shared with The Guardian in an October 2002 interview. "You need a strong frame, just like a car," Montgomery told the publication. "You couldn't put a Ferrari engine in a Volkswagen." For Montgomery, that meant he still needed to put in the work in the gym despite having a world record under his belt. Of cars, he gushed about how he loves the adrenaline rush from driving fast ones. The sprinter swore that when he put his mind to it during his training, he could move at the speed of his license plate, 9.76, which was 0.02 seconds faster than his world record.
During his interview with "Trans World Sport," he showed off his collection of classic sports cars, got into his Chevrolet Chevelle convertible, and drove off. "I like speed," the then-sports star proclaimed. "You know, there's days like this where you can just go in the country and just ride ... Just think about your competition, just think about your goals ... It's just wonderful."
He and Marion Jones worked with a controversial coach
After divorcing her first husband in 2002, Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery began dating and were both training with coach Trevor Graham, but unceremoniously parted ways with him in late 2002. Graham claimed he was dismissed by the couple, but Montgomery disagreed when he spoke to Reuters the following year. "I did not leave Trevor Graham, Trevor Graham called and left me," Montgomery alleged (via ABC). "He terminated me due to the fact that I am running (a world-record) 9.78 and Marion wanted to know why she was not running faster."
The duo went on to hire the services of Canadian coach Charlie Francis, a move that did not sit well with the athletic community. Francis had become infamous for his involvement in the Dubin inquiry in the late 1980s after his client, two-time Olympic gold medalist Ben Johnson's, results for performance-enhancing drugs turned out positive.
In February 2003, Jones and Montgomery stopped training with Francis largely due to the backlash. Looking back at that period, Montgomery told "Trans World Sport," "It was very surprising, but it was a wake-up call. And it's just telling us that, 'You're in the eye of the public. And when you're not in public, you got to abide by the rules.'"
He and Jones welcomed a son together
When Tim Montgomery broke Maurice Greene's world record in 2002, he achieved it in a pair of Nike shoes that his then-girlfriend, Marion Jones, had lent to him. The duo indulged in a kiss after the race, which announced the nature of their relationship to the world. Soon after, the couple's child, Tim Montgomery Jr. — dubbed "Monty" by those who knew him well — was born in June 2003.
"I am so happy," Jones said in a statement to the press, per the Los Angeles Times. "This is the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. He's a beautiful baby, and Tim and I could not be more excited."
Although Montgomery Sr. wasn't present when his son was born due to a track event in Scotland, he flew back to the United States the following day to be with his family in North Carolina. Their son had arrived weeks earlier than they had anticipated, making him remark, "We knew we'd have a fast baby, but I didn't expect him to be this fast." Montgomery Sr. went on to father a total of four children with four women.
Montgomery was implicated in the BALCO scandal
Tim Montgomery and Marion Jones' ex-coach Trevor Graham opened Pandora's box in June 2003 when he first reported the existence of an untraceable performing-enhancing drug used by leading track stars. In a conversation with The Guardian, Graham revealed that a sample of the drug — real name tetrahydrogestrinone, or THG — that was sent to the United States Anti-Doping Agency came from Jones' ex-husband, C.J. Hunter. In September of that year, the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO) was stormed by federal investigators.
Montgomery later admitted that he joined "Project World Record," a BALCO operation meant to make him a world record holder, in November 2000. He was put on a doping regimen with an elaborate shipping system under the pseudonym "Vince Reed." "If [a package] had 'BALCO' on it, it was the vitamins," Montgomery explained in an interview with ESPN. "If it was 'Vince Reed,' it was something that shouldn't be in the mail. Maybe it was once a week. Packages for Marion came to me, and I'd give them to Trevor [Graham]."
According to the athlete, Graham was the brains behind the mission; an attempt to make super athletes. He further testified (via SFGate) that the THG wasn't effective. "A lot of people ran terrible on it," Montgomery claimed, adding that it was designed to work better with weight trainers and not runners.
Montgomery's world record was revoked
Tim Montgomery was found guilty of doping and had his world record revoked in December 2005. The disgraced athlete was also banned from competing for two years. "It is sad when any athlete makes the tragic decision to cheat because it robs other athletes of their deserved recognition and hurts our sport," then-USA Track & Field CEO Craig Masback told The Guardian. Soon afterward, the former Olympian announced that he was hanging up his running shoes and retiring from the sport.
Montgomery went on to claim that he had not partaken in the drug, tetrahydrogestrinone (THG), deliberately. According to a 2005 conversation he had with the press (via Sydney Morning Herald), Montgomery believed that the decision to ban him had been based on sprinter Kelli White's testimony, which he alleged was misconstrued. "[White] said she told me, '[THG] made me tight,'" Montgomery insisted. "I had just ran 6.46 seconds, the best time I had ever run (over 60m). So I was complaining ... she was the one who had cramped up. If they (CAS) went by the evidence, they would have never had a case."
Jones and Montgomery spilt up
In light of their doping scandal and a check fraud gone wrong (more details on this later), tensions brewed in Tim Montgomery and Marion Jones' relationship. Just as he told the world of his retirement, Montgomery revealed that the athletic power couple was no more. "It's kind of hard to be underneath the same household when you are going through some of the same things," Montgomery told the press (via The Sydney Morning Herald) in 2005. "We decided to remain friends so we can concentrate on making a future for our (2-year-old) son. We decided to make a decision to better ourselves for our kid."
As it turned out, the ex-lovers' relationship would only continue to take a turn for the worse. Montgomery and Jones didn't so much as co-parent, as he revealed in his 2009 interview with ESPN. Their son, he said, was in touch with his side of the family, but not him. "No mother should keep a child away from his father unless he's hurting the child," Montgomery remarked about his lack of relationship with his son.
He sold drugs after his money ran out
Before the news broke about BALCO, Tim Montgomery would often earn large sums of cash from doing appearances and signing sponsorship deals, like his $575,000-a-year deal with Nike. When his connection to the BALCO scandal became public knowledge, Montgomery's revenue streams dwindled. Unlike Marion Jones, who retraced her basketball roots to join the Tulsa Shock when the dust had settled, Montgomery had an illegitimate solution: drugs.
"I had been around bad people the whole time," he revealed in his chat with ESPN. "When this all happened, I had to turn to them because I was trying to get some money. You have to understand: Drug dealers want to be athletes and athletes want to be cool. Those schemes were always around me, but I didn't participate because I was all right. Then everything was happening and I decided to turn this into something."
Montgomery was partly driven by his desire to return to the track, as he was under the impression that if he paid back the money he had won — a total of $270,000 — he would be allowed to compete again. This logic ultimately ended up backfiring for him when he was caught by the police.
He was sentenced to five years in prison
Tim Montgomery was caught red-handed by police selling heroin to an undercover officer. The sprinter pled guilty to the drug charges was handed a five-year prison sentence in October 2008. At the time, Montgomery was already serving a 46-month term for a check scam that also landed his ex-partner Marion Jones in trouble. He had deposited three fake checks to the tune of $775,000, which subsequently brought in a meager $20,000.
Of Jones's part in the scheme, he told ESPN, "It's why she doesn't talk to me to this day. She got involved [in the check scheme] to help me. As I tried to protect her, she gave [federal investigators] a different story." By Montgomery's account, Jones was set to testify against him, but because her story didn't hold water, she was coerced into outing herself for lesser jail time.
In a 2007 press conference,Jones owned up to using performance-enhancing drugs and confessed to making false statements to federal investigators. This ultimately landed her in prison for six months and an additional two months for the check scheme. A little more than a year later, Montgomery professed his guilt in the BALCO saga for the very first time in an interview with "Real Sports" (via The New York Times). "I knew [the drugs were illegal]. I'm not going to lie. I knew," he divulged.
He married Jamalee Montgomery in 2009
Tim Montgomery's life in prison was nothing like he was used to on the outside. In place of the five-to-six-figure checks he got as an elite athlete, he did landscaping for work behind bars. Montgomery, however, built coaching skills by helping train other inmates, which laid the foundation for him to have a new lease on life after he got out. He picked up reading — a habit that he had overlooked in the past — wrote unreleased versions of his memoir, and finished all of the "Twilight" book series in addition to browsing through the Bible.
He lost touch with most of his past acquaintances, but his old flame and would-be wife, Jamalee Montgomery, stayed in the picture. In October 2009, Tim and Jamalee tied the knot while he was still locked up. Their daughter, Tymiah, was born in 2001 before he began dating Marion Jones. Back in the day, the ex-athlete was not family-oriented, as Jamalee shared in an interview with USA Today. "He had different goals, and family wasn't it at the time," she said. Tim would eventually clean up his act after leaving prison.
Montgomery transitioned to coaching
Tim Montgomery was finally freed from prison in 2012 after four years and six months. Upon his release, he founded NUMA Speed, a fitness coaching business located in Florida. The idea struck him when he was imprisoned, and the letters are an acronym for "Never Underestimate My Ability."
"The business has helped him because he can't go back and erase time," Tim's spouse, Jamalee Montgomery, told USA Today in their joint 2013 interview. "He can help clients meet their goals, and that gives him joy." At the time, Tim had 80 people on his roster, each bringing in $50 per hour for individual sessions and $35 per hour for group practice.
Given his past, some potential clients were skeptical about working with him, but over time, Tim has proven to be just as committed to his health. On his personal Instagram, Tim constantly uploads videos and pictures of himself working out. "It's been a long hard fight physically and mentally," the caption of a March 2021 post reads. Of his past, Tim told USA Today, "I didn't lose at the first part of my life. I just made a bad choice. But I won't lose at the second part of my life."