Los Angeles (United States) (AFP) – Victor Conte, the mastermind of the notorious BALCO doping scandal that rocked athletics and baseball during the early 2000s, died Monday aged 75, a statement from his company said. “We are heartbroken by the passing of our fearless leader,” Conte’s SNAC sports nutrition company announced in a statement on Twitter. “Your memory will forever live in our hearts,” the post added, beneath a picture of Conte.
Conte was jailed for four months in 2005 for his role in the BALCO scandal, which implicated baseball stars Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi and led to the downfall of Olympic track and field star Marion Jones. Founded in 1984, Conte’s Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO) would eventually become synonymous with doping in sports. BALCO chemists developed a doping regime that combined multiple performance-enhancing substances which would go largely undetected by drug testers.
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The company was brought down when investigators from the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) were sent a syringe containing traces of a previously unknown substance in 2003. It later emerged that the syringe had been sent by Trevor Graham, the sprint coach to US Olympic star Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery. As the investigation into the scandal grew, a string of athletes were incriminated, including British sprinter Dwain Chambers.
Jones was eventually drawn into the scandal, and after years of denials, later admitted to lying to federal agents about her use of performance-enhancing substances. She was subsequently stripped of the three gold medals won at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Jones would later serve around six months in prison in 2008 after admitting lying to investigators in the steroid case as well as involvement in a check fraud case.
The BALCO case also cast a shadow over baseball during that era. Several baseball players, including Jason Giambi, Jeremy Giambi, Armando Rios, and Benito Santiago, later testified before a federal grand jury that used steroids provided to them by Greg Anderson, the personal trainer of San Francisco Giants star Barry Bonds. Bonds later testified that he had been administered steroids unwittingly by Anderson, believing they had been flaxseed oil and a rubbing balm.
Conte later attempted to rehabilitate his image, casting himself as an anti-doping advocate who had readily supplied information to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in order to tackle drug cheats.
© 2024 AFP
