Posted on 12/02/2004 11:33:12 PM PST by Cableguy
On Sept. 3, 2003, federal agents raided the offices of the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative and set off one of the biggest sports scandals in history. Now the man at the center of the scandal, Victor Conte, wants to tell his side of the story -- about giving Marion Jones performance-enhancing drugs, about helping Tim Montgomery become the world's fastest man, about supplying Barry Bonds' trainer, Greg Anderson, with the designer steroid THG.
"Did I do things wrong? Yes. Am I the only one? No," says Conte, who has been indicted on 35 counts of steroid distribution and money laundering. "The whole system is rotten. I have too much information to go quietly. They want to expose the rotten side of sports? Bring it on."
On April 21, 2001, I was sitting in an Embassy Suites hotel room in Covina, Calif., about a foot away from Marion Jones. The next day, she was going to try to break the world record in the 300 meters. It was her first competition of the 2001 season, and we were both excited.
We'd had a lot of success since the previous August, after I'd begun sending her packages of various performance enhancers including "The Clear," a steroid that later became famous as THG, and nutritional supplements. She was on all of it at the 2000 Games in Sydney, when she won three gold medals and two bronzes. I tell you this knowing Marion passed a lie-detector test saying it's not true. All that shows me is lie detectors don't work.
She came to my room for a new piece of equipment I'd brought, a $1,000 NovoPen injector that looked like a Sharpie and can be used for human growth hormone. I needed to teach her how to use it. Marion wasn't the least bit nervous; she's always in control. She pulled the spandex of her bicycle shorts above her right thigh. She dialed up a dose of four-and-a-half units of growth hormone and injected it into her quadriceps.
Marion won the race the next day, but didn't break the record, which has stood since 1984. I wasn't surprised. Back then, before year-round drug testing, sprinters could use as much as they liked, as long as they tapered off just before a race. No one can get away with that today. I liked Marion and I don't think she was doing anything differently than anyone else. But I do know she was using the very best stuff. I made sure of it.
Want to know how this part of my life started? It wasn't with drugs. When I played bass for Tower of Power in the '70's, I was one of the only band members who wasn't using drugs. Believe it or not, I'm very conservative. I ran track in school in Fresno, so I've always believed in fitness.
In 1984, after 18 years in music, playing with people like Herbie Hancock, I needed to get off the road and take care of my family. So I invested in a preventive medicine center, and a machine that traces 40 minerals in the blood. I couldn't pronounce the name of the thing, but I figured if it cost me $25 to do a test, and I could charge $100 to give one, maybe I could make a business out of it.
That was the beginning of BALCO.
I went to Stanford's medical library and started to copy articles about minerals and how to measure them. I got pretty good at it. One day in 1985 I was at a medical conference talking about my work when a coach from Cal-Berkeley said, "How'd you like to help the world's fastest swimmer?"
Matt Biondi was strong up to 120 meters, but then he hit the wall. We gave him a battery of tests, found he was depleted in magnesium and got him on supplements. Six weeks later, he smashed the American 200-meter record. One thing led to another, and I started to work with athletes who were heading to the 1988 Olympics in Seoul. I prepared 15 Americans -- in track, swimming and judo -- who brought back medals.
I had no idea how corrupt the Olympics were until four years later. I was working with Gregg Tafralis, who'd been a shot-putter since he was 12. Somewhere along the line, a coach told him, "If you want to go to the Olympics, you have to do steroids." I knew Gregg was doing them when he finished ninth in Seoul, but I didn't provide them. He was still doing them in 1992, when he finished fourth at the Olympic Trials in New Orleans and didn't make the team. Naturally, he was upset. But it was nothing compared with how he felt two days later, when a friend of mine, an official with USA Track & Field, called to say: "Your boy tested positive. It's just a matter of time before he's banned."
Gregg was destroyed. A day later, the same friend called back. "Guess what?" he said. "Your boy's results are getting covered up. I guess they figure it's not a good time for positive tests to come out, on the eve of the Olympics." That's when I learned there are two sets of rules: the ones in the book and the ones everybody plays by.
I was still going by the book when Bill Romanowski showed up at BALCO early in the summer of 1996. He'd heard about our tests from his speed coach, and loved what we did for him ... so much so that he introduced me around at Broncos camp. I wound up designing mineral programs for all the guys.
By the time Romo was finished referring players to me, I had a database of about 250 NFL clients. I knew that more than two thirds of them ran low on zinc and magnesium after strenuous exercise. That's why I created ZMA, a supplement that replenishes those two minerals and adds a shot of vitamin B6, too. It had gross sales of $25 million in 1999, its debut year. Since I got 10 percent of that, I'd made enough money that I didn't have to show up at a job in the morning anymore. Now I could do whatever I wanted.
By then I'd become interested in steroids. At the San Francisco Pro Invitational Body Building contest in 1998, they asked me to talk about BALCO. Twenty-one bodybuilders were there, all curious about what our tests could tell them. I collected their blood and urine and discovered the steroids they were using -- trenbolone, primobolan -- were plain old $10 testosterone that had been re-labeled. I told them that whoever was selling them the stuff was ripping them off.
What really surprised me was that, although these guys were taking massive doses of anabolic steroids, their biochemical profiles weren't that bad. One or two guys had abnormalities, but in general the effects weren't nearly as bad as what I'd expected.
In the spring of 1999, I was at another bodybuilding show when someone offered me a clear liquid. I won't tell you who gave it to me. All I'll say is he called it "The Stuff." I assumed it was some sort of pro-hormone. It was norbolethone, the first generation of "The Clear." I tried it myself, then gave it to some people I trained with. Even at a moderate dosage, it enhanced recovery without any crazy side effects -- 'roid rage or anything like that. We gradually started to incorporate "The Stuff" into programs of certain elite athletes. Romanowski got it first. A couple of months later, I gave a small amount to the sprinter Chryste Gaines. But let me tell you something about Chryste: She wasn't a fan of any of this. Then I gave it to the twin Olympians, Alvin and Calvin Harrison, the summer before the 2000 Olympics. Let's be clear: This didn't happen overnight. It's not like I ran out and started giving "The Stuff" to any and all athletes that may have wanted to try it. And none of this over-the-line activity had to do with making money. I was already rich.
It was about Victor making history.
And I did a few months later, even if it wasn't the way I'd intended to. In August 2000, the world's sports media sat in a hotel conference room waiting to hear Marion Jones defend her husband, C.J. Hunter, at the Sydney Games -- and I was on the stage right next to them. Three days earlier, Marion had won the 100 meters by the second-biggest margin in Olympic history. Then the media busted the news that C.J. had failed four drug tests for nandrolone in Europe earlier in the summer, and all hell broke loose. Why was I on that podium? C.J. had called me six weeks before the Olympics to ask me to work with Marion. I started providing her with insulin, growth hormone, EPO and "The Clear," as well as nutritional supplements. None of this had anything to do with C.J.'s failed tests. He swore to me he wasn't using nandrolone. When I asked him about supplements he was taking, he said he bought some iron pills at a pharmacy in Rome.
I'd heard about problems with the brand he mentioned. The Olympic lab in Germany found more than half the bottles they tested were contaminated with nandrolone. I called the plant where it was made, and the owner said there were three machines making different supplements one day. One was making the iron pill C.J. bought, but another was making a pro-hormone that contained nandrolone, and its particles flew all over the place. That was proof enough for me. I told C.J. his supplements were contaminated.
The morning after the news broke in Sydney, C.J. came to my hotel with guys from NBC and Nike and said, "Tell 'em what you got." I told them the mixers story. The next thing I knew, I was facing Johnnie Cochran. I told him, too. That's when he said: "We got the media waiting. You're going to explain all this." It took 45 minutes to get there. On the way, we picked up Marion. It was the first time I'd actually met her. We talked the whole way. When we got to the press conference, she got up and said, "I stand by my man." C.J. said, "I didn't take anything." Then he turned to me. "Take over, Victor."
It was clearly my job was to create reasonable doubt. But here's the part that amazed me: I never, ever worked with C.J., but the media reported I gave him the contaminated supplement.
Back around the same time, C.J. asked me to work with Marion, I also heard from her training partner, Tim Montgomery. Tim was 5'10'' and weighed 148 pounds when I met him; that's why they called him Tiny Tim. He told me he had more potential than anybody, but didn't have the support. He'd just come through an awful year and was very upset with his coach, Trevor Graham, who also was Marion's coach.
As soon as I found out what Tim was taking, I said: "You're oversaturated with performance-enhancing drugs. Too much is just as bad as not enough." I first met Tim when I gave him some of "The Clear" in Sydney, and he visited BALCO in November. I'd assembled a team -- Project World Record -- that included Milos Sarcev, a brilliant bodybuilder, and Charlie Francis, who coached Ben Johnson when he won gold in the '88 Games. Milos developed Tim's weight-training program. Charlie developed his track-training program. And I developed his pharmacology and nutrition program. Graham was the front man.
Want to hear something amazing? There's a BALCO calendar for Tim that shows he was taking insulin, EPO, growth hormone, "The Clear" and adrenaline -- five different performance-enhancing agents -- through 2001. At the end of June, Tim won the United States Championship. Soon after, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency sent him a post-competition letter that said: "Congratulations, Tim. You've tested negative for all performance-enhancing substances in the sample that was collected." He was using all these drugs and [the] USADA couldn't detect any of them. So how easy is it to beat the USADA test? It's like taking candy from a baby. The results of Project World Record, by the way, were phenomenal. Tim made $600,000 in 2001.
Tim and Marion had started dating. If you ask me, the worst thing that ever happened to Marion's career was leaving C.J. He was hugely responsible for making sure she did what she was supposed to. I told her as much on June 9, 2001, at a track meet at Stanford. I had to reprimand her for getting careless. She'd left a cartridge injector in a refrigerator in a hotel room in Edmonton while she was on a promotional tour in May, and had to go back and get it. Then she left it again at a hotel in Eugene, Ore., a few days later. After the first time she forgot it, she said she'd put it in a sneaker and lean the sneaker against the refrigerator so she wouldn't forget it. Then she forgot the shoe. That injector had a thousand dollars worth of growth hormone in it!
I couldn't afford the risk. My ZMA track team was having a big year. Tim was the U.S. men's champion in the 100 meters and about to become the fastest man in the world. Chryste was the female 100-meter champion, and Kelli White was her runner-up. I couldn't afford to have Marion leave a growth-hormone injector in a room registered in her name. I was also having some financial problems with Tim: he owed me $25,000 from a personal loan. So that August, I ended my relationship with both of them. Soon I was working with their rivals.
One was British sprinter Dwain Chambers. I met Dwain at a track at the U of Miami in January 2002, and eventually gave him the full enchilada: "The Clear," insulin, EPO, growth hormone, modafinil and a testosterone cream I'd started using that didn't show up on standard drug screens. By August, he was the European 100-meter champion. I took it to the next level with Kelli White in Paris in 2003, when she became the first American woman to ever win the 100- and 200-meter titles at the same world championships. She became a very disciplined student. Besides the same things Dwain was on, she also was taking a new drug I'd started using, thyroid hormone T-3. It makes all the other drugs work more effectively by accelerating metabolic rate. You feel light as a feather. What amazes me is that all through the championships, the only thing the testers caught Kelli using was modafinil, a drug for narcolepsy.
Before I go any further, let me get to what I'm sure is on your mind: baseball. I was almost completely out of the loop on baseball at BALCO. All the blood and urine testing we did for baseball players was coordinated through my partner, Jim Valente. I've talked to Barry Bonds about nutrition. Gary Sheffield, too, who Greg Anderson brought in to see me. But not only have I never given either of them a performance-enhancing drug, I've never even discussed the topic with them.
Now, did Barry's trainer, Greg Anderson, ever get "The Clear" and "The Cream" from me? Yes, he did. On about half a dozen occasions, I gave him some. There were never any questions. We never discussed who it was for. I assumed it was for Greg, OK? That's all I know about performance-enhancing drugs and baseball players. What I do know is that the amount of performance-enhancing drugs the feds found at Greg's house was minuscule. The feds built it up as, "there were 800 items found and blah, blah, blah." Are you kidding me? When you go through the list and distill it down -- one pill of Andriol, five Dyazid, one vial of depo-testosterone; well, you get the idea -- they found practically zero. Do I think a majority of baseball players use performance-enhancing drugs? Yes. What do you think is going on as we speak? Until training camp in March, it's open season for steroids and other performance-enhancing agents. Major League Baseball still doesn't have year-round random testing 365 days a year. Baseball's anti-doping program is ridiculous.
I knew the Sept. 3, 2003, raid on my lab was coming.
My mailman told me the feds had been opening my mail for about a year. Plus, I'd learned someone was going through our trash. The owner of a business near BALCO called to accuse us of dumping my trash in his bin. When we got it back, we saw every bag we'd tied shut had been opened. The feds were too dumb to throw my trash back where it belonged.
What surprised me was the way the raid came down: Seven black cars screeching into the parking lot. Twenty-six IRS and San Mateo Narcotics Task Force agents in flak jackets pouring out, screaming and waving guns. A helicopter hovering overhead. A half-dozen news trucks filming it all. They were using a tank to kill a mosquito.
And for what? For a turf war. The feds stumbled into a turf war.
Before the 2003 US Track and Field Championships, Trevor Graham called the headquarters of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency in Colorado to say that he had a syringe that came from Victor Conte. Then he forwarded it to the agency, which in turn sent it to the Olympic testing lab in Los Angeles. Now, I've given packages of performance-enhancing drugs directly to Trevor. And I've heard from more than one very good source that he anonymously sent a sample of "The Clear" to the Olympic drug testing lab at UCLA a year earlier, in 2002, but the lab didn't have a big enough sample to identify it. Well, it worked this time. The guy who runs the Olympic lab, Don Catlin, finally figured out what "The Clear" was, and sent his results to USADA. A month after the raid on BALCO, it was announced that USADA had uncovered a "conspiracy involving chemists, coaches and athletes."
It's been widely publicized that I confessed. I want to say, straight up, that's a lie. The lead IRS agent, Jeff Novitzky, divided a page in columns and wrote "Track," "Baseball" and "Football" across the top of each. Then he mentioned some names. I said something like, "Yeah, I worked with that person." I even mentioned a few he'd missed.
But what came out in the press? "Victor Conte said he gave 'The Clear' and 'The Cream' to all 27 of these athletes." An absolute lie. I've never met Jason Giambi or his brother, Jeremy. I've never shaken their hand. I've never talked to them on the phone. Why would I tell a police officer I gave drugs to somebody I've never met?
Then Novitzky asked me, "Victor, would you be willing to wear a wire and help us collect evidence on other people, like physicians, coaches, chemists, athletes, etc.?" My answer was, absolutely not. That interview is not in any police report, anywhere. Isn't that amazing? It's like it never happened.
The feds want you to believe this is about them trying to control performance-enhancing drugs. It's not. It's about celebrity. It's about Barry Bonds. Marion Jones. The Olympics. My clients didn't come to BALCO to learn how to do drugs. Most were already using before they came.
And it's about fooling the public. You think it's over, just because they've indicted me? Please. There's a new version out there right now. It's "The Stuff III." If the feds hadn't raided BALCO, I'd have gotten it by now.
People have asked me: "Do you feel guilty about what you did? Are you ashamed?" The answer is no. I got to a point where I realized elite sport is about doing what you have to do to win. I've seen athletes being forced to decide whether to use or not use, and it's much more painful for them to entertain the idea of giving up their dream than to use anabolic steroids. That's what's really going on. That's the choice athletes face when they get to the very top.
Why did I do it? Because I'm a competitive person. I can't hold my own on a track, court or playing field. But I've still competed year-round at the highest levels. It's been special to be in the trenches when one of my athletes won an Olympic gold or became the world's fastest human.
Why am I telling you this now? Because I believe if you do things for the right reasons, the outcome will be positive. And I believe the world deserves to know the truth about the way things really work, painful as it may be to hear.
Victor Conte is the founder of the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative. Shaun Assael is a senior writer for ESPN the Magazine.
I think those 4 were the ones we all knew were using....
especially since Bonds has admitted, Romo has admitted and Montgomery got busted for it....Jones passed some farce of a lie detector test, but she clearly wasnt herself this past summer...
And, that bike guy, Lance somebody is on epo, the red blood cell stimulant.
"The 1990's will be known as the decade of fraud and deceit."
--Rush Limbaugh, following Clinton's election in 1992.
Sports in the mid-late 90's is a fraud. These pros are corrupt.
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