Posts Tagged ‘BALCO’

BALCO founder Victor Conte has remarked that the Major League Baseball may have come to an agreement with its players to test their blood for human growth hormone but the game would be required to come to grips with its present testing before it touts itself as the leader in new drug testing.

MLB should use a more sophisticated form of detecting testosterone or its HGH testing won’t really make an impact as players often make use of small amounts of testosterone in conjunction with HGH, Conte said.

From Articles.nydailynews.com:

“HGH is not effective unless it is used in conjunction with testosterone or other anabolic steroids,” Conte says. “It’s important to understand that HGH is not an anabolic agent. It is an anti-catabolic agent. It basically helps to reduce muscle degradation and enables a player to maintain the gains they’ve made using steroids for a longer period of time. By itself, HGH has been shown to have no significant performance-enhancing effects.”

Conte, who is now an advocate for stronger testing, has been saying for years that the 4-to-1 testosterone to epitestosterone ratio used by baseball and other leagues to detect testosterone use is ineffective.

“Testosterone gels, creams and patches will clear an MLB player’s system within a matter of hours and be below the 4 to 1 T/E ratio allowable in urine,” he says. “A player could possibly use a fast-acting form of testosterone at night after a game to help with recovery and their T/E ratio would be within the normal range by the time they would get to the ballpark the next evening.

“If MLB were to implement CIR testing, I believe they would possibly catch a significant number of players using testosterone,” Conte says.

Mexican fighter Juan Manuel Marquez defended himself on Wednesday as doping clouds arose after his strength coach was revealed to be among those involved in a major doping scandal that stung US athletics.

“Whatever doping they want to do – blood, Olympian – whatever they want to do, I’ll do it, as long as he does it too,” Marquez said through a translator.

From Sport24.co.za:

Victor Conte, whose BALCO products were at the centre of a major doping scandal, revealed in a Twitter posting on Monday that Marquez’s strength and conditioning coach was Angel Heredia, who testified in a doping investigation.

Heredia admitted providing banned performance-enhancing substances to Trevor Graham, former coach of disgraced former stars Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery among others.

Alex Ariza, Pacquiao’s strength and conditioning coach, commented about Marquez looking bigger and stronger as well. Together with Heredia’s past links to doping, Marquez found himself on the defensive about his fit physique.

“It’s a shame all the work I’ve done has been trashed by these guys, Conte and Ariza,” Marquez said.

The strength and conditioning coach of Juan Manuel Marquez, Angel “Memo” Hernandez, recently threatened to sue Alex Ariza, his counterpart in the camp of Manny Pacquiao.

“I would like to say through this medium and the public that logically, we are preparing a lawsuit for defamation against Mr. Alex Ariza,” Hernandez said, his words translated from Spanish.

From Boxingforum.com:

While it is unclear exactly which of Ariza’s comments have sparked Hernandez’ statements, Hernandez has come under scrutiny lately after former BALCO chief Victor Conte revealed through his Twitter account on Monday that Hernandez is the former Angel Heredia.

As the government’s star witness in the infamous BALCO doping cases, Heredia testified before a San Francisco court in May of 2008 that he had sold banned substances—namely EPO, growth hormone and steroids—to Olympic sprinters like Marion Jones.

Conte ended up serving four months in prison for his role in orchestrating the steroid distribution scandal.

However, Hernandez’ ire was not directed at Conte, but rather at Ariza and Pacquiao, the latter of whom will fight Marquez on Nov. 12 at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

“On his behalf, the declarations he has made are very direct. I think they’re very prejudicial not just with respect toward the image of Juan Manuel Marquez, but for mine as his physical trainer,” Hernandez said.

Prosecutors finished their closing argument in the perjury trial of Barry Bonds, the former baseball player and the home run King, by painting him as a slippery superstar.

Prosecutors said Bonds lied to hide his use of performance enhancing drugs while he closed in on the game’s all-time home run record.

From Reuters.com:

Nedrow said witnesses’ testimony, documents, a secret recording, drug bottles and syringes show Bonds lied to protect his reputation, recklessly thwarting a grand jury investigation into the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (BALCO).

The government agreed not to hold him accountable for his 2003 grand jury testimony — unless he lied.

“Why would the defendant testify falsely after getting immunity?” Nedrow asked. “The reason was a secret and it was a powerful secret and it was that he had been using anabolic steroids and human growth hormones. He had concern that it would taint his accomplishments.”

Bonds’ attorneys planned to deliver their closing argument on Thursday with jury deliberations set to begin as early as Friday in the highest profile U.S. case involving sports and performance-enhancing drugs.

“All he had to do was tell the truth,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Nedrow said before a packed courtroom. “He chose not to tell the truth and that’s why he’s here.”

Founder of the designer drugs pharmacy BALCO, Victor Conte, has disclosed that Marion Jones, the greatest female athlete of her generation, was provided with insulin, growth hormone, EPO, and ‘The Clear’ (users’ slang for THG) as well as nutritional supplements.

Jones was on a cocktail of drugs including insulin, growth hormone, EPO, and THG when she won three gold medals and two bronze at the Sydney Olympics, Conte said.

From Independent.ie:

“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 realised elite sport is about doing what you have to do to win. My clients didn’t come to BALCO to learn how to do drugs. Most were already using (drugs) before they came.

“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.”

Conte’s interview contains extraordinary detail about Jones and the drugs regime that he oversaw, beginning with the build-up to the Sydney Olympics.

“CJ (Hunter, the shot-putter and her husband at the time) had called me six weeks before the Olympics to ask me to work with Marion,” he says. “I started providing her with insulin, growth hormone, EPO and ‘The Clear’ (users’ slang for THG) as well as nutritional supplements. She was on all of it at the 2000 Games. 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.”

Conte also said, “Soon I was working with their (Jones and Montgomery’s) rivals,” he says. It is here that Dwain Chambers, of Great Britain, enters the story, another who, despite being banned, continues to profess his innocence. Conte says he gave Chambers “the full enchilada”: ‘The Clear,’ insulin, EPO, growth hormone, modafinil and a testosterone cream.

Marion Jones, the triple Olympics champion in 2000, tested positive for erythropoietin at the US championships in Indianapolis.

The athlete could face a ban of two years if the B sample confirms the A sample as revealed in the test conducted by the International Association of Athletics Federations.

From Guardian.co.uk:

In 1999 Jones’s then husband, the world shot-put champion CJ Hunter, tested positive for record levels of the anabolic steroid nandralone which forced him to withdraw from the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, where she won both sprints and a third gold in the 4×400m relay as well as bronze medals in the short relay and long jump.

After he was banned for two years Jones left him and started a relationship with Tim Montgomery, who like her was coached by the Jamaican-born Trevor Graham. Montgomery set a world record for the 100m of 9.78 sec at Paris in 2002, a mark subsequently annulled after he was banned for two years in December due to evidence given in a federal investigation into the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (Balco) in San Francisco.

A number of witnesses involved in the case claimed Jones, a former basketball player, was involved in taking banned performance-enhancing drugs. She has always denied the allegation.

Jones left the hotel where the athletes were staying at 6am, reportedly “for personal reasons”.

The possibility of an expansion of the investigation beyond traditional drug distribution to investigate allegations that Lance Armstrong and other top cyclists engaged in doping is presently being explored by the federal authorities.

The authorities are expected to ascertain if Armstrong, the owners and managers of his past cycling teams and his teammates conspired to defraud their sponsors by improving performance by doping to garner more prizes and money.

From NYTimes.com:

The authorities will also closely examine the contract between Armstrong and S.C.A. Promotions, a company that refused to pay a $5 million bonus in 2004 after a book that alleged Armstrong engaged in doping, one of the people said. Armstrong sued S.C.A. Promotions, and the case — which resulted in hours of testimony by Armstrong and others under oath — was later settled out of court. S.C.A. was forced to pay $5 million and about $2.5 million in penalties.

“Federal fraud charges are fairly straightforward; they apply to any scheme to acquire money or property through deceit or misrepresentation,” said Daniel C. Richman, a professor of law at Columbia University and former federal prosecutor. “In this case, the authorities would have to prove that Armstrong was misrepresenting himself to sponsors by saying that he was clean but was actually using performance-enhancing drugs and profiting from it.”

Jeff Novitzky, the federal agent, who has been the lead investigator on the major doping investigations since the BALCO case began in 2002 met Floyd Landis, the former teammate of Lance Armstrong, and is playing a direct role in the investigation.

Victor Conte, the former steroids magnate who owned the infamous Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (BALCO) still believes that more than half of the semi-finalists in the London 2012 Olympics will likely use illegal drugs at some stage of their training.

According to an interview conducted in celebration of the 10^th anniversary of the World Anti-Doping Agency, Conte believes that cheating in sports, through performance-enhancing drugs is still rampant, despite improvements in steroids and drug testing.

Asked about his opinion as to how many of the sprinters who were able to make it to the semi-finals may have possibly used steroids, he replied by using the term “an overwhelming majority”.

The lab Conte used to own may have been tiny, but Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative became big news due to the steroids scandal in 2003 that continues its “legacy” in the sporting world, destroying careers of hundreds of athletes, even including his own.

Some of Conte’s prominent clients include Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery. Both made their way to the Olympics and even earned medals with the help of BALCO products.

Conte said he regretted getting involved in doping and would like to make amends by contributing his knowledge in doping and steroids.

From Reuters:

MONTREAL (Reuters) – Cheating is still rife in sport despite improved testing and more than half the sprint semi-finalists at the London 2012 Olympics are likely to use illegal drugs at some stage of their preparations, says Victor Conte, the man at the heart of the BALCO doping scandal.

The increasing number of nutritional companies found to sell nutritional supplements containing steroids and designer steroids caught the attention of the US Congress.

Senator Arlen Specter, Democrat of Pennsylvania called for a hearing last Tuesday. The hearing, which was titled “Body Building Products and Hidden Steroids: Enforcement Barriers”, was presented before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs.

Another nutritional company was found to sell these products containing steroids and steroid like substances. FBI agents raided the headquarters and warehouse of Bodybuilding.com in Boise, Idaho last Thursday.

As part of the investigation, the Food and Drug Administration purchased products sold by this company. Twenty-six out of thirty-one products positively tested to contain steroids. Among the steroids found were Tren, Madol, Superdrol, androstenedione, and Turinabol. It even includes a similar substance found in the raid on the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (BALCO) in 2003.

Bodybuilding.com is owned by the same company that owns Atlanta Braves. In 2008, most of the controller stake was bought by Liberty Media for over $100 million.

In July, FDA issued a warning to the public regarding nutritional supplements secretly containing steroids and steroid like substances, after numerous reports were received by the agency about men who developed acute liver and kidney failure after using these dietary supplements.

From New York Times:

The nutrition company, BodyBuilding.com, is selling dietary supplements that contain steroids and designer steroids, including a substance found in the raid on the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative in 2003, the court papers said.