Despite improvements in steroids and drug testing, in general, Victor Conte 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.

Interviewers asked Conte 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”.

Conte used to own a tiny laboratory in the outskirts of San Francisco. The lab 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.

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The use of anabolic steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs are considered cheating in sports. These substances may give athletes the unfair advantage over competitors, who usually work mostly through their own efforts.

Some famous athletes fell from grace because of steroids use. Here are a few of them:

Marion Jones, a former world champion in track and field, won five medals during the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia. She was recently released from a six-month imprisonment from March to September 2008 for admitting guilty to a perjury charge. She lied in two grand juries about her steroid use. Her name was also linked to the BALCO scandal and all her medals and winning records were stripped away from her.

Just like Marion Jones, Barry Bonds was also involved in the BALCO scandal. The seven-timer MVP awardee is considered one of the greatest baseball players of all time. However, he spent his 2008 baseball season without any activity.

Many athletes think that they could just get away with it. Many athletes are not stopped from taking anabolic steroids to improve their overall performance.

However, once they are caught, their careers are over or it may suffer from never-ending criticisms. Fans may even lose trust and confidence in the athlete and in the game.

From Test Country:

Steroid use in sports is cheating in the eyes of sports authorities. That is because the use of anabolic steroids and other similar drugs enhances the performance of an athlete and gives the athlete an unfair advantage over others working mostly through their own efforts. It violates the honor-bound code that sportsmen are supposed to follow.

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Tetrahydrogestrinone (THG) is often referred to as “The Clear”. It is an anabolic steroid developed by Patrick Arnold for Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (BALCO), an American nutritional supplement company. The drug has great affinity to the androgen and progesterone receptors but not the estrogen receptor.

Side effects of THG include infertility in both genders; acne; hirsutism; and sometimes, immunosuppression.

Before its discovery, it is considered the drug of choice by many athletes due to its “invisible” effects in the world of sports. Some of the athletes who admitted to using it were Marion Jones, the sprinter and British athlete Dwain Chambers.

It was first discovered in June 2003, when a spent syringe containing undetectable anabolic steroid was anonymously provided to the United States Anti-doping Agency (USADA). The research team was led by Dr. Don Catlin, MD, the then-director of the UCLA Olympic Analytical Lab.

Dr. Catlin and associates were able to synthesize a compound, which matched the unknown substance in the syringe. They then proceed to develop a new detection test for this particular compound, which they named as tetrahydrogestrinone.

At present, THG is detectable in the urine after both intravenous and intramuscular administration. Dr. Catlin was later named as Sportsman of the Year by the Chicago tribune.

From The Medical News:

In June 2003, a spent syringe having allegedly contained an undetectable anabolic steroid was anonymously provided to the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), and the contents delivered to the research team in Los Angeles. The researchers, led by Don Catlin, detected an unfamiliar substance and deduced its chemical formula. They were then able to synthesize a compound with this formula, which they named tetrahydrogestrinone (THG) and which matched the unknown substance in the syringe.

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Steroids have been a continuing issue in the world of sports. It created numerous headlines involving famous athletes like Marion Jones. She admitted that steroids indeed changed her outlook in life.

Marion Jones, the first black-American millionaire female athlete, told the press that her poor judgment and reaction shattered all that she had worked hard for.

In October 2007, Marion Jones, now 33, pleaded guilty of lying to federal investigators regarding her usage of performance-enhancing drugs. She was sentenced to six months of imprisonment in Federal Medical Center-Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas.

Jones shared her steroid past in a lecture of the Wharton’s Sports Business Initiative series on race at the University of Pennsylvania. However, she didn’t tackle her life in prison.

The former sprinter said that she had disappointed fans and supporters because she did not live up to their expectation of being a role model. She was forced to return all the medals she won during the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia, where she won two gold and three bronze medals.

From Philadelphia Daily News:

Steroids, like any drug, have the ability to change things. They can increase muscle mass, strength, and even speed.

But for Marion Jones, they changed her life.

“One poor judgment or one bad reaction can wipe away all of your hard work. One poor decision can take away all that you’ve achieved. The right decisions will protect and preserve all of [your] coveted success and dreams.”

Jones reminisced how the Title IX legislation, enacted 37 years ago had opened many opportunities for women, especially to her and the rest of female athletes. Finally, she cited that she will share her story to keep the Title IX legislation alive. Marion Jones was once part of the North Carolina’s team in 1994 women’s NCAA basketball championship before she concentrated on track.

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If you were to guess which illegal drug is selling like hotcakes, you would probably think that it would be something addictive like heroin. Well, according to Director David Howman of the World Anti-Doping Agency or WADA, there is more money made in selling anabolic steroids than in trafficking of heroin. He released this statement at the Jamaica Anti-Doping Commission where he was a speaker during a recent symposium.

From The Jamaica Observer:

The trained barrister told the Observer there are no official statistics, but based his comments on anecdotal evidence gathered by WADA.

“It’s very difficult to have evidence on, because if it’s not illegal there is nobody gathering the statistics, but it’s been corroborated by researchers and we commissioned someone in Italy who formed a view that through the Internet and how it was being trafficked. The evidence is there,” he told the Observer.

Steroids are banned in most sporting events of almost any sport. According to Howman, even though there are laws on the use of performance enhancing drugs, some sports such as baseball are not that strict in enforcing these laws. Baseball officials have already seen their lack of control over their athletes after the Mitchell Report was released last year. Many athletes manage to outsmart the system though.

Howman also highlighted several ways in which athletes try to ‘beat the system’ to avoid detection of doping, such as directly injecting urine into the bladder using a syringe and needle or through using a device known as a ‘Whizzinator’.

The Whizzinator comes as a kit complete with dried urine and syringe, heater packs, and a false penis which athletes use to fraudulently beat drugs tests. There is also said to be a female version.

The only chance to truly eradicate the trafficking of steroids is if police forces would coordinate with each other, no matter what state or country. Howman cited the case of Marion Jones wherein even the Interpol was set to help if the athlete had been out of the country.

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This is the question posed by the non-profit organization in their new website http://sports.procon.org.

ProCon.org is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit, 501(c)(3) public charity whose mission statement reads: “Promoting critical thinking, education, and informed citizenship by presenting controversial issues in a straightforward, nonpartisan primarily pro-con format.”

Their latest online project contains nearly 30 questions about the use of drugs in sports.

PR News lists some of the topics for some heated discussion on the Web:

* Tiger Woods‘ alleged LASIK surgery to improve his vision to 20/15 is ethically different than an athlete taking a banned substance

* there is a correlation between the 5% (approximate) of middle schoolers who take anabolic steroids and the use of such substances by their athlete role models

* the testing labs, such as the one that found cyclist Floyd Landis guilty of using banned drugs, are credible and reliable

* the teammates of sprinter Marion Jones should return their Olympic gold medals. None of them tested positive for banned drugs although Jones confessed to having used them.

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An AP report focuses on the high-tech side of the most massive doping scandal in the United States referred to as the BALCO Affair.

There is an ongoing legal dilemma amongst federal judges relating to the seizure of urine samples of more than 100 major league players not originally involved in the BALCO steroid investigation.

The battle is now at the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in which an 11-member panel must decide whether prosecutors had the legal right to seize the names and urine samples of the 104 players during a raid carried out in 2004.

“There has to be limits when the government seizes vast amount of information on a computer,” Major League Baseball Players Association lawyer Elliot Peters said.

The federal agents who took the material from the Long Beach-based Comprehensive Drug Testing Inc. had a search warrant for the test results of just 10 players, but discovered on a computer spreadsheet the test results of additional players.

The players’ association went to court, and lower-court judges ruled the additional names were seized illegally. A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit reversed those decisions twice in 2-1 votes, but the entire 9th Circuit set the reversal aside and decided to hear the case en banc.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Douglas Wilson argued Thursday the government had a legal right to investigate all of the players who tested positive because their names and test results were on a single document containing the names of the 10 players listed in the search warrant. Wilson said since the government was entitled to 10 players’ test results, it was entitled to the entire spreadsheet.

Wilson’s argument was attacked early and often by at least six judges, who expressed doubt that a computer spreadsheet is analogous to a paper document, which investigators have a right to seize so long as it contains evidence listed in the search warrant.

“When you are talking about computers, a single document can contain vast amounts of information,” Judge Kim Wardlaw said.
A
Judge Mylan Smith was even more pointed, complaining that allowing the government on narrowly focused investigations to seize computer databases, hard drives and spreadsheets containing large amounts of information “would probably be frightening to the public because there’s no end to it.”

The BALCO Affair has involved several famous athletes and has resulted to congressional hearings and independent investigations. Most prominent of these investigations is the Mitchell Report, which has probed the use of steroids in the Major League Baseball.

Several personalities were prosecuted and jailed because of their involvement in said scandal including BALCO’s founder Victor Conte, chemist Patrick Arnold who designed “the clear”, containing testosterone, an anabolic steroid, and track athlete Marion Jones.

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Disgraced sprinter Marion Jones once again appeared in a TV show to profess her innocence in the BALCO doping controversy that has ruined many athletes’ stellar career.

In her recent appearance on “Good Morning America” Jones  admits the incident may have ruined her reputation forever but she hopes that she can prevent others from committing the mistakes she has made. This is the same mantra she uttered at the “Oprah Winfrey Show”, her first interview since she was released from prison in September. Expect the same tune to be played in 2009 as the former track star is apparently running a crusade to “reach out” to youths out there.

“I have paid the ultimate price,” she said on “Good Morning America“. “For the rest of my life, certain people will equate me with this controversy.

“Throughout all of this I’ve learned I’ve hurt a lot of people and it’s my responsibility to give back,” the 33-year-old said.

Up to this day, Jones insists she has no knowledge that prohibited compounds were being administered to her. This despite of her six-month imprisonment for lying about her anabolic steroid use and her involvement in a check-fraud scheme.

BALCO’s Victor Conte had consistently refuted Jones’ claims. “She did the injection with me sitting right there next to her,” he said in December 2004.

Between these two controversial figures, who do you think people would believe?

From ABC News:

The once-heralded runner was at the top of her game and had the nation’s admiration, and a life that glittered as much as the gold medals she picked up on the Olympic circuit. But a doping scandal stripped her of her Olympic medals, and the one-time fastest woman in the world spent six months in prison after she was convicted in January of lying to federal prosecutors about her use of performance-enhancing drugs and her role in a check-fraud scam.

“I was in a much different place in my life. I made much different choices. I made bad decisions,” said Jones, who missed her youngest son’s first birthday due to jail time.

The sportswoman still contends — as she always has — that she was unaware that drugs were being administered to her.

“That’s the truth. I have experienced a lot of negative consequences for what I’ve admitted,” she said. “When you’re a high-profile person, you trust certain people around you. You trust they will have your best interests in mind.”

On Oprah, Jones apologized to her teammates who were stripped of their medals and records because of her doping violation during the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

“When I stepped on that track, I thought everybody was drug-free, including myself,” Jones said. “I apologize for having to put everybody through all of this.

“I’m trying to move on. I hope that everybody else can move on, too.”

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This year is Olympic year so it’s more interesting than the previous years as far as doping is concerned.

Remember the canny seven Russian track and field athletes who resorted to urine swapping to pass drug tests?

The International Association of the Athletics Federation officials became suspicious when said women athletes were always present for unannounced random tests. The Russians were also very punctual, arriving at testing places even before the IAAF officials got there.

“There were no ‘no shows’,” one official told Reuters. “The Russians were always there.”

So the officials started storing the athletes’ samples. Further investigation revealed that the latest urine samples provided by the athletes did not match the DNA of the stored samples. The Russians were later suspended. The athletes include Tatyana Tomashova, the two-time world 1,500 meters champion; and Yelena Soboleva, the world indoor 1,500 meters champion.

And who wouldn’t remember the Greek athletes who figured prominently in this year’s doping list because of quite a handful of failed dope tests.

In March, eleven of the 14 members of the Greek weightlifting team tested positive for the steroid methyltrienolone in out-of-competition testing in Athens. Then there was champion hurdler Fani Halkia, sprinter Dimitris Regas, and Anastasios Gousis who got banned for testing positive also for methyltrienolone. All Greek athletes were suspended for doping.

In Tour de France four riders, including the third finisher Bernhard Kohl, were suspended for testing positive for CERA, the new generation variant of the blood-boosting drug EPO

There was Marion Jones’ sprint in and out of jail for her use of performance-enhancing drugs and her involvement in a check fraud case. Jones began her six-month jail term March and was released September 5.

The NFL’s diuretic case also was in the news which involved several athletes who blamed the StarCaps weight-loss pill for their failed dope tests. Pat Williams and Kevin Williams of the Vikings were among the players who tested positive for the masking agent bumetanide.

The Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds anabolic steroids cases also dominated the sports scene in 2008 and are expected to remain in the headlines in 2009. The much-awaited Barry Bonds trial will commence March next year

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This is probably Tim Montgomery’s way of redeeming himself in the eyes of the public.

As he serves his four-year sentence for fraud and conspiracy offenses, the former sprinter admits in an interview with HBO that he took testosterone and human growth hormone prior to the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. Because of the doping infringement, Montgomery says, he does not deserve the gold medal he won in the 400 meter relay.

“I have a gold medal that I’m sitting on that I didn’t get with my own ability,” Montgomery stated in the interview. “I’m not here to take away from anybody else’s accomplishments, only my own. And I must say, I apologize to the other people that was on the relay team if that was to happen.”

Darryl Seibel, spokesman for the US Olympic Committee, has an immediate retort for Montgomery.

“If Tim Montgomery cheated at the games, then he should step forward and voluntarily return his medal, just as others from the 2000 team have done. By using a banned substance, any result he achieved is tainted,” Seibel said to Associated Press.

“He has a responsibility to his sport, to the athletes against whom he competed in Sydney and also to the new generation of track athletes who are doing their best to compete the right way and put problems like this in the past.”

Montgomery’s case has precedents, and they don’t bode well for Jon Drummond, Bernard Williams, Brian Lewis, Maurice Greene and Kenneth Brokenburr – Montgomery’s teammates at the 400 meter relay.

The men’s team which won the 1,600 meter event also at the Sydney Olympics were stripped off their medals when one member, Antonio Pettigrew, confessed to doping. Same thing happened with the U.S. women’s teams also in Sydney when the former sprint queen Marion Jones was implicated in a doping scandal. Jones’ teams, which won the gold in the 1,600 meter and bronze at the 400 meter relay, were disqualified by the International Olympic Committee executive board and were asked to return their medals.

“This is an example of the far-reaching consequences of cheating,” Seibel said. “The integrity of sport must be preserved, even if that means invalidating results and forfeiting medals.”

Jones had served her six-month sentence for lying about her use of anabolic steroids and her role in a check-fraud scheme. She was released from prison facility in Texas on September 5, 2008. Meanwhile, Montgomery, Jones’ former boyfriend, has to face another prison term after serving his check-fraud sentence, wherein Steve Riddick, coach to both Montgomery and Jones, was also involved. Riddick was also convicted for conspiracy, bank fraud and money laundering charges.

After Montgomery completes his sentence for the fraud charges, the 33-year-old former record holder is to serve another five years for selling more than 100 grams of heroin. He was found guilty of this crime and sentenced to jail October this year.

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