Victor Conte
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Victor Conte is the founder and president of Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO), a controversial sports nutrition center in Burlingame, California, which the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) says developed the banned steroid tetrahydrogestrinone (THG) with the help of bodybuilding chemist Patrick Arnold. Pursuant to a plea bargain struck with prosecutors, he entered guilty pleas in July 2005 to one count of conspiracy to distribute steroids and a second count of laundering a portion of a check, he was sentenced in October to spend four months in prison and another four on house arrest.
In December 2004, he participated in an interview with Martin Bashir on ABC's 20/20 program, where he admitted to running doping programs, which have broken Olympic records, as well as revealing that: "The whole history of the games is just full of corruption, cover-up, performance-enhancing drug use." [1]
In the interview he implicated, among others, five-time Olympic gold medalist Marion Jones and her partner Tim Montgomery, Kelli White (who later admitted using performance enhancing drugs), British athlete Dwain Chambers, baseball star Barry Bonds and NFL player Bill Romanowski.
In the 1970s, Conte had played bass guitar in the group Tower of Power and collaborated with pianist Herbie Hancock.
On 21 December 2006, Yahoo Sports reported that one of Conte's initial defense lawyers, Troy Ellerman, had been targeted by the FBI as a possible source of leaks to the media during the Barry Bonds probe.[2] On February 14, 2007, Ellerman plead guilty to leaking grand jury testimony.
[edit] External links
- ABC 20/20 interview with Victor Conte
- 2003 biography by BBC Sport
- Guardian (UK) report on interview
- Conte's Usenet posts
- Scientific Nutrition for Advanced Conditioning
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