On Wednesday, Mexican fighter Juan Manuel Marquez defended himself 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.

Tags: athletics, BALCO, conditioning coach, doping, Juan Manuel Marquez, Marion Jones, Tim Montgomery, Trevor Graham, Victor Conte

Posted in buy steroids, Steroid Cycles, steroid nation, Steroids and Anabolic Steroids, Steroids in Sports

Antonio Pettigrew, the former 400m world champion, has been found dead in the backseat of his car in North Carolina. The cause of his death is unknown by now but Major Gary Blankenship, of the Chatham County sheriff’s office, said the car was locked and there was evidence that the 42-year-old had taken sleeping pills.

Body of Pettigrew has been taken for an autopsy but toxicology results are not expected back for at least four weeks.

From Guardian.co.uk:

“Although we are still learning the circumstances, we are deeply saddened to learn of Antonio’s death,” said the school’s athletic director, Dick Baddour.

“I was particularly impressed with the relationships he established with his student athletes and the pride he took in representing the university. Our deepest condolences go out to Antonio’s family, particularly his wife and son.”

The 42-year-old, who had worked at the university as an assistant athletics coach for four seasons, won the world title in 1991.

The sprinter also won a 4x400m gold at the 2000 Sydney Olympics but the relay team, including Michael Johnson, were stripped of their medals after Pettigrew admitted at the trial of the banned coach Trevor Graham that he had used performance-enhancing drugs from 1997 to 2003.

The University of North Carolina, the employer of Pettigrew, had earlier released a statement confirming the news.

Tags: Antonio Pettigrew, Michael Johnson, Performance enhancing drugs, Trevor Graham

Posted in buy steroids, Steroid Cycles, steroid nation, Steroids and Anabolic Steroids, Steroids in Olympics, Steroids in Sports

It has been many years since the joint world-record holder Justin Gatlin tested positive for testosterone but the athlete is now positive that his eight-year suspension will be reduced.

If Gatlin has his way, this could put the American authorities on a collision course with the world governing body, the International Association of Athletics Federations, which could overshadow preparations for Beijing.

From Guardian.co.uk:

The reason for Gatlin’s confidence was the testimony of Jeff Novitzky, an FBI agent who led the investigation into the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (Balco). He testified that Gatlin had secretly recorded more than 10 telephone calls with Graham during which there was no evidence that he had been given or that he had taken any performance-enhancing drugs. Novitzky, who testified for more than two hours, claimed Gatlin was the only athlete to provide undercover assistance willingly during the five-year Balco investigation of steroid use in sports, which has resulted in five criminal convictions and more than a dozen bans for athletes.

Novitzky’s compelling evidence could conceivably persuade the panel to look favourably upon Gatlin, which would be something of a remarkable double as six years ago the sprinter managed to convince another arbitration hearing that a stimulant he had tested for was because he was suffering from attention deficit disorder and he served a much shorter ban than he should have done. That is also why he was given an eight-year ban rather than the life suspension as is normal after a second offence.

Since the positive test, Gatlin has returned home to Florida, disassociated himself from Trevor Graham, who has coached nearly a dozen sprinters who have been involved in doping scandals.

Tags: Justin Gatlin, steroid use in sports, testosterone, Trevor Graham

Posted in buy steroids, Steroid Cycles, steroid nation, Steroids and Anabolic Steroids, Steroids in Sports

The 28-year-old American, Justin Gatlin, has said that he expects to compete at London 2012 Olympics after serving a doping ban of four years.

Gatlin will be participating in the 100m at a small track meet in Estonia and said it was his family that had given him the motivation to keep running.

From Guardian.co.uk:

Gatlin won gold in the 100m at the 2004 Athens Olympics and in the 100m and 200m at the 2005 World Championships in Helsinki. He tested positive in April 2006 for excessive testosterone, but claims he doesn’t know how the banned substance got into his system.

“I went through all the phases: depression, anger,” Gatlin said. “Right now, I’m just really more calm.”

He was formerly coached by Trevor Graham, who was given a lifetime ban by the US Anti-Doping Agency for his role in helping athletes obtain performance-enhancing drugs. Graham also coached Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery, who have both received doping bans.

Gatlin is now training under the speed coach Loren Seagrave, who once worked with the former world record-holder Donovan Bailey. Seagrave said Gatlin’s technique in the race will be more important than his time.

Gatlin said he is “ready to be fast” when asked if he could run under 10 seconds.

Tags: doping, Justin Gatlin, London 2012, testosterone, Trevor Graham

Posted in buy steroids, Steroid Cycles, steroid nation, Steroids and Anabolic Steroids, Steroids in Olympics, Steroids in Sports

The controversial US-based coach, Trevor Graham, was recently found on one of three charges of lying to federal investigators about his association with a steroids dealer. Graham could face a retrial after the jury was unable to reach a verdict on the other two counts.

Graham, who guided the careers of the sprinters Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery, had been charged over false claims about his relationship with Angel Heredia who admitted supplying performance enhancing drugs.

From Guardian.co.uk:

The maximum he could receive for the one count of lying is five years in prison and a $250,000 (£127,000) fine, although a typical sentence for a first-time offender is less than one year.

It was the Jamaican-born coach who sparked the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (Balco) scandal in 2003 when he sent a sample of the anabolic steroid tetrahydrogestrinone (THG) to the United States Anti-Doping Agency. He then found himself at the centre of the biggest drugs haul in track and field.

In the wake of the Graham trial, where the American 400m runner Antonio Pettigrew admitted using steroids since 1997, Britain’s relay team at the 1997 World Championships could be in for an unexpected gold medal. Led by Roger Black they finished second in Athens behind a US quartet who included Pettigrew. The IAAF’s president, Lamine Diack, wants to look into extending the limit on retrospective drug bans beyond eight years.

William Keane, the court-appointed attorney of Graham, said he would probably file a motion for an acquittal on the one charge that was found proved.

Tags: anabolic steroid, Marion Jones, Performance enhancing drugs, steroids dealer, Tetrahydrogestrinone, THG, Tim Montgomery, Trevor Graham

Posted in buy steroids, Steroid Cycles, steroid nation, Steroids and Anabolic Steroids, Steroids in Sports

Justin Gatlin lamented his lost status among the world’s sprinting elite during much of the last four years. Gatlin appealed his penalty after testing positive for steroids and made serious efforts to reshape life as a fitness entrepreneur and aspiring professional football player.

With his suspension coming to an end, Gatlin hopes to compete by the end of this season. The 2004 Olympic champion and a former world-record holder in the 100 meters now faces limited competitive options and will have to seek only lower-tier invitational meets at the major European meets.

From NYTimes.com:

Once the world’s top sprinter, Gatlin won three medals at the Athens Olympics. He won the 100 and the 200 at the 2005 world championships, and in May 2006 he equaled Asafa Powell’s world record in the 100, running 9.77 seconds.

Less than three months later, however, Gatlin disclosed that he had tested positive for a testosterone precursor at a meet the previous April, although he said he did not knowingly use the drug.

Gatlin lost two appeals. But his suspension could have been far worse than four years. With a previous violation for taking medication for attention deficit disorder, he could have been barred for life as a double offender.

Gatlin has never admitted guilt and said that for much of the time he was suspended he struggled to understand the cause of his positive test in 2006. Now he is concentrating on again being a dominant sprinter.

“I would love to know what happened to me, and I think the world would love to know,” Gatlin said. “But that’s not what I’m trying to focus on. I have to get ready to run anywhere under the sun.”

Gatlin and his former coach Trevor Graham blamed a massage therapist for the positive test and Graham has been suspended from track for life.

Tags: Justin Gatlin, sprinting, steroids, testosterone precursor, Trevor Graham

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The disgraced American sprinter, Marion Jones, opened up on The Oprah Winfrey Show but still does not find it easy to take the complete responsibility for the drug use episode that had tarnished her career and the Sydney Olympics.

It is worth noting here that Jones lied before the investigators when shown a phial of “the clear” denying use of drugs but partially made a confession when she was about to be sent to prison.

From Foxsports.com.au:

In the interview, Jones said she would have won gold medals at the 2000 Games even if she had not taken the designer steroid, “the clear”.

“I’ll ask myself, ‘Well, if you hadn’t been given ‘the clear’ do you think you would’ve won?”‘ Jones said in her first interview since her release from a Texas prison, where she served time for lying to investigators.

“I usually answer, ‘Yes’.

“When I stepped on that track, I thought everybody was drug-free, including myself.”

Jones won both the 100m and 200m races in Sydney by substantial margins. In the 100m, she clocked 10.75sec, beating Greek athlete Ekaterini Thanou (who has since been banned for avoiding a drug test) by 0.37sec, a margin of around three metres.

In the 200m, Jones trounced the field by almost half a second, hitting the line in 21.84sec, while second-placed Pauline Davis-Thompson of the Bahamas clocked 22.27sec. But the benefits of the steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs she was taking were not just evident on race day.

Jones maintained that she did not suspected anything illegal in the substance given to her by Coach Trevor Graham and considered it as flaxseed oil.

Tags: designer steroid, drug use episode, flaxseed oil, Marion Jones, Performance enhancing drugs, steroids, Trevor Graham

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A member of the gold medal winning US 4 X 400m relay team has admitted that the he used performance enhancing drugs during the Sydney 2000 Olympics.

Antonio Pettigrew admitted using performance enhancers and the admission can mean that gold medals won by fellow relay team members Alvin and Calvin Harrison are also in jeopardy.

From Foxsports.com.au:

Pettigrew testified that Graham encouraged him in 1997 to inject human growth hormone and the oxygen-boosting drug EPO, which are both banned in track.

Soon after, Pettigrew said, he began buying the drugs from Angel “Memo” Heredia, an admitted steroids dealer from Laredo, Texas.

Once he began taking the banned substances, Pettigrew said he was able to run 400 metres in under 43 seconds for the first time.

“I was running incredible times as I was preparing for track meets,” Pettigrew said during 30 minutes of testimony.

“I was able to recover faster.”

Pettigrew initially lied to federal investigators and denied doping when they first talked to him in February 2005. But he finally confessed to cheating when confronted with documents in October 2006 strongly suggesting drug buys from Heredia.

Pettigrew’s admission came during a testimony in the trial of Trevor Graham, his former coach, who is accused of hiding the truth to federal authorities investigating doping in sports.

Tags: Antonio Pettigrew, doping, doping in sports, EPO, performance enhancers, Performance enhancing drugs, Trevor Graham

Posted in buy steroids, Steroid Cycles, steroid nation, Steroids and Anabolic Steroids

Steroids use has become widespread in athletics when almost every sport seem to produce a player positive for performance enhancing drugs. After baseball, wrestling, cycling, football, now comes Justin Gatlin from track in field. Reports of his involvement with the banned substance is not anything new because he is serving his four year ban for testing positive for steroids. He is now preparing to continue on with his career next year after the ban is lifted.

Gatlin said that in 2006 he was tested positive without knowing that prior to the testing the cream that a masseuse had used on him contained steroids. Trevor Graham made this statement and this was corroborated by Gatlin.

From NY Daily News:

Gatlin has since adopted the argument, although he didn’t fight the penalty from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency in August of that year. He faced a lifetime ban, thanks to a prior positive test at the University of Tennessee for amphetamines found in the Attention Deficit Disorder drug Adderall, so Gatlin jumped when USADA offered an eight-year ban with an option to appeal if he acknowledged the tests.

That ban was cut to four years by a USADA arbitration panel early last year, largely because of Gatlin’s claim that his positive test in college occurred because of medication he took for Attention Deficit Disorder. Gatlin added that he assisted the federal BALCO investigation in late 2006, secretly taping phone calls with Graham and testifying against his trainer in 2007.

“And I just turned around and did that stuff,” he says. “If I used steroids, you think I would do that?”

However, there are still those in the tracks that doubt his claims. Gatlin has to go back to the top and prove that he isn’t cheating once he is reinstated in 2010. But all of these will be happening under the watchful eye of USADA.

Tags: Justin Gatlin, steroids, track and field, Trevor Graham, USADA

Posted in steroid nation, Steroids and Anabolic Steroids, Steroids in Baseball, Steroids in Olympics, Steroids in Sports

Champion boxer Shane Mosley is a fighter by heart and to him quitting is not an option. That philosophy has worked for him in the ring and he hopes it’s going to do him service in the legal arena as well.

Mosley’s defamation suit against Victor Conte and the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO) has been dismissed in the San Francisco Federal Court and Mosley immediately filed similar suit in a state court in New York.

James Wagstaffe, Conte’s lawyer, said he would file a motion to argue that New York is an improper jurisdiction.

“He’s seeking publicity,” Wagstaffe said of Mosley. “He was facing bad publicity. His suit was about to be thrown out. He’s suing because he wants the world to know he sued. It’s a process case, and at the end of the day, when people bring libel suits to make a point, the truth follows.”

“Shane Mosley is going to soon find out that the truth packs a powerful punch,” said Conte. “I am going to knock him out in a court of law.”

Conte is the founder of BALCO and is now called as the ‘mastermind of the biggest doping ring in the history of sports’. In 2003, the so-called BALCO Affair grabbed international attention because of the status of the personalities that were implicated.

The BALCO Legacy

Numerous professional athletes, including Marion Jones, Bill Romanowski, Roger Clemens, and Barry Bonds, were reportedly supplied with steroids and performance boosters. Subsequently, a federal inquiry took place conducting investigations and procuring evidence against athletes, coaches, trainers, as well as those connected with BALCO.

A couple of those involved in said scandal have been found guilty, mostly of perjury charges.

Marion Jones is currently serving her six-month prison term for perjury involving check fraud case and use of banned compounds.

Trevor Graham, the famed US athletics coach to many elite athletes, including Jones, was convicted in May 2008 of one count of lying to federal investigators.

Conte himself spent four months in prison and another four months under house arrest for one count of conspiracy to distribute steroids and a second count of laundering a portion of a check.

In December 2007, The Mitchell Report was released. United States Senator George Mitchell conducted the investigation on the use of steroids and performance-enhancing substances in the Major League.

Mitchell was appointed by MLB Commissioner Bud Selig at the height of the controversy created by the publication of the book Game of Shadows by San Francisco Chronicle investigative reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada in 2006. Williams and Fainaru-Wada were the reporters who exposed the BALCO Affair. Game of Shadows chronicles the use of banned compounds by MLB players, including Bonds, Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield.

Of Books and Crooks?

Taking cue from the authors of Game of Shadows Conte is now planning to publish a tell-all book, which includes the allegations he made against Mosley.

It was March 30 this year when it was announced by the New York Daily News that Conte is scheduled to write BALCO: The Straight Dope on Barry Bonds, Marion and What We Can Do to Save Sports.

Mosley’s attorney, Judd Burstein, meanwhile said that they are ready for a legal counter.
“As soon as they publish the book we’re going to sue them the next day,” Burstein said to the Daily News.

According to Burstein, the new suit against Conte demands for at least $2 million in compensatory and at least $10 million in punitive damages. He added that they are ready also to sue the insurance company underwriting Skyhorse Publishing for defamation. Skyhorse is the publisher of Conte’s book.

Conte bared his allegations about Mosley’s doping to the public on March 30, telling several media groups that Mosley was very much in the know of what he was getting from the BALCO founder.

Three days later Mosley sued Conte.

Mosley has repeatedly denied that he has knowingly take steroids and other PEDs. He said he thought the substances he was provided with were legal and healthy compounds. According to Burstein, his client has provided the same statement for the grand jury which was investigating BALCO in 2003.

“Shane’s never denied that he took the stuff,” said Burstein. “He just didn’t know what it was.”

Conte, however, was saying otherwise and offered evidence to support his claim.

Conte said he has calendars that provide vital details about Mosley’s doping protocol. Along with Mosley’s former trainer Derryl Hudson, Conte has filed a sworn affidavit detailing how he directly explained to the boxer that the compounds were steroids and erythropoietin or what is commonly known as EPO. Conte and Hudson had also stated in their affidavits that Conte demonstrated to Mosley how to self-administer EPO.

“This dismissal is proof that the case has no merit,” said Wagstaffe of Mosley’s case in San Francisco. “After we submitted proof that Mr. Conte’s statements were true, Mosley and his attorneys dismissed the California lawsuit.”

Jeff Novitsky, a lead investigator on the BALCO steroid scandal, has also directly implicated Mosley. Novitsky reported that a document found at a BALCO lab indicated that the boxer had received designer steroids known as The Clear and The Cream, which were later identified as tetrahydrogestrinone and testosterone cream, respectively.
Defamation suits en vogue

Defamation suits seem to be the trend nowadays in sports world. Another BALCO-related suit was by that of Roger Clemens against his former trainer Brian McNamee. Clemens and McNamee were two of the most prominent names involved in the BALCO Affair.

In January this year, Clemens filed a defamation complaint against McNamee before the latter was to testify on Clemen’s use of steroids and human growth hormone.

Other athletes outside of the BALCO Affair have also sued for defamation related to doping allegations in recent years. These include cyclists Kayle Leogrande and Lance Armstrong.
Seven-time Tour de France champ Armstrong has been embroiled in numerous defamation suits stemming from doping allegations. He’s been against Britain’s Sunday Times in 2004 when the newspaper reprinted allegations mentioned in the book L. A. Confidentiel – Les secrets de Lance Armstrong.

The book contains the allegations of Armstrong’s former masseuse Emma O’ Reilly who claimed that she had disposed of syringes and disguised needle marks on his arms. Another source of the book was Steve Swart, a teammate of Armstrong during his Motorola days, who alleged that he and Armstrong as well other riders began using steroids in 1995.

Kayle Leogrande, likewise, recently served a defamation case against Suzanne Sonye, a former staff member of Leogrande’s Rock Racing team. Leogrande also filed similar complaint against fellow professional cyclist Matt DeCanio.

The defamation suit resulted from a phone conversation between Sonye and Decanio, in which the former had mentioned that Leogrande was a doper. DeCanio, an anti-doping activist, recorded the conversation and posted it on his website. Leogrande apparently got a temper as colorful as his tattoos and took offense and sue Sonye and DeCanio.

Tags: BALCO, boxing, cycling, defamation suit, Game of shadows, Kayle Leogrande, Lance Armstrong, Marion Jones, Performance enhancing drugs, Shane Mosley, steroids, Tetrahydrogestrinone, The Clear, The Cream, Trevor Graham, Victor Conte

Posted in steroid nation, Steroids and Anabolic Steroids, Steroids in Baseball, Steroids in Boxing, Steroids in Olympics, Steroids in Sports