Steroid Nation

Chief executive of USA Track & Field exhorts President Bush not to pardon Marion Jones

Marion Jones, tacked away snuggly  in a Texas federal prison, wrote to President Bush asking for a pardon.  The head of the track federation who witnessed her drug-cheating drew up a counter-proposal: DON'T.

Doug Logan -- cheif executive of US Track and Field -- wrote an open letter to President Bush exhorting him not to wipe off Marion Jones's fast sins.  The New York Times elaborates:

“Our country has long turned a blind eye to the misdeeds of our heroes,” Doug Logan wrote in an open letter to President Bush. Logan was named chief executive of the sport’s national governing body last week. “If you have athletic talent or money or fame, the law is applied much differently than if you are slow or poor or an average American trying to get by. At the same time, all sports have for far too long given the benefit of the doubt to its heroes who seem too good to be true, even when common sense indicates they are not.

“To reduce Ms. Jones’s sentence or pardon her would send a horrible message to young people who idolized her, reinforcing the notion that you can cheat and be entitled to get away with it. A pardon would also send the wrong message to the international community. Few things are more globally respected than the Olympic Games, and to pardon one of the biggest frauds perpetuated on the Olympic movement would be nothing less than thumbing our collective noses at the world.”

Jones, as we all recall, vehemently denied use of PEDs even to the point of a defamation suit against BALCO executive Victor Conte, whose ring distributed steroids to Jones.  Jones was also involved in fraud with her partner drug-cheat Tim Montgomery.

Jones is among about 2,300 offenders seeking pardons and commutations during the final months of President Bush’s term in office. Her lawyer, Henry J. DePippo, did not respond to a request for comment.

The letter sent by Logan was a striking departure from the often-timid remarks made by leaders of various Olympic sports federations. It reflected the anger that many antidoping officials felt after Jones called into question the legitimacy of drug-testing procedures before acknowledging that she had taken illicit substances.

Will the President pardon an Olympian who used weapons of mass enhancement?

Carl W. Tobias, who teaches constitutional law at the University of Richmond School of Law and who has tracked President Bush’s pardons, said the chances that Jones would receive a pardon appeared “pretty long and may be getting longer,” in light of Logan’s letter.

Tobias said that Bush had been “extremely stingy” in granting pardons, compared with other recent presidents, and that Jones’s high profile could work against her.

“I just think she would somehow be perceived as getting some slack because of who she was,” Tobias said.

“So much attention is trained on her, and maybe that makes it more difficult than if she were someone who is less well known.”

Reports of 150 web sites offering illegal steroids on-line

Two organizations offered up some sleuthing work to uncover Internet web sites offering steroids online.  Market Watch and Dark Reading cover the research by Legit Script and Knujon.

From Market Watch:

Kids at Risk: Report Identifies 150 Websites Selling Anabolic Steroids

'Pumped Up on the Internet' calls for action from ICANN, US-based domain name registrars

            
ARLINGTON, Va. and BOSTON, July 21, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- LegitScript.com, an online pharmacy verification service, and KnujOn.com, an Internet spam and criminality watchdog, have released an investigative report that identifies 156 websites engaged in the illicit sale of anabolic steroids.

          
Steroid abuse is part of the larger prescription drug abuse problem, which is the second largest drug abuse problem in the United States. The abuse of anabolic steroids is concentrated among youth and young adults. The websites identified in the report enable Web-savvy youth to easily obtain illicit anabolic steroids

"None of the steroid websites we reviewed required a prescription, and none used any sort of age verification service," said John Horton, President of LegitScript. "Studies indicate that youth and young adults are the most at risk for illicit steroid use, and these websites are just a fraction of those we identified selling these drugs."

A little hyperbole included the 'Kids at Risk' headline.  Who knows how many of these Internet drugs fall into children's and adolescent's hands (or muscles).  Dark Reading meanwhile gives us the following:

Several hundred Websites sponsored by U.S. Internet domain registrars, including the popular GoDaddy, are selling steroids illegally, according to two online fraud watchdog organizations. They have been discovered by two Internet anti-fraud groups.

KnujOn, which fights email abuse and online fraud, teamed up with LegitScript.com, which verifies licensed online pharmacies and exposes underground ones, to ferret out the steroid-pushing sites and domains. The Internet domains that sponsor such sites should seek to suspend them, the watchdog groups say.

The two organizations today published a report describing the steroid-selling sites and outing the registrars that had signed them up. “These are 'Schedule III' substances -- it is illegal to distribute them in the U.S. without a license, or receive them without a prescription,” says Garth Bruen, creator of KnujOn. “They are delivered via postal mail, FedEx, etc. ... and this also violates the law.”

The U.S. domain registrars cited are Abacus America Inc., DSTR Acquisition VII LLC, Dynadot.com, Everyones Internet, Ltd., dba resellone.net, eNom, Inc., EstDomains, Inc, GoDaddy/Wild West, Parava Networks, Inc., and dba 10-Domains.com, according to the report. One GoDaddy-sponsored site in the report, aarxpharmacy.com sells anabolic steroids, testosterone, and other controlled substances.

As of late last week, KnujOn said it had not gotten much of a response from the U.S. Internet registrars after alerting them of the steroid sites and asking them to suspend the sites. Only a few registrars responded -- and they refused to take action, according to KnujOn

It will be interesting to see if these reports can decrease the number of illicit steroids sales on-line.

Dark Reading goes on after the jump:

Daily Steroids Dose

1.  Australian police station raided in steroids search.  (ABC News)

2.  While you're watching those Olympians selling candy bars remember once Ben Johnson was a corporate spokesman.  (Blogging Stocks)

3.  California bans steroids in horse racing.  (Modesto Bee)

Spain linked to 2008 Tour de France doping cases: Moises Duenas arraigned; Implicated doctor in doping

The Scotsman explores the 3 doping cases (actually 4) by linking them to Spain, home of Operational Puerto's infamy a fews Tours back.

What links all three doping cases – four if you include Piepoli, though he has not tested positive – is Spain. Beltran and Duenas are Spanish; Piepoli and Ricco ride for a Spanish team.

It was Spain, too, where Operacion Puerto, the blood doping investigation that came to public attention in 2006, was centred. It concerned a blood doping ring based in Madrid, with bags of blood recovered from a flat, reportedly belonging to around 200 athletes. The doctor at the centre of the ring, Eufemiano Fuentes, was linked to footballers, tennis players and athletes (his wife is Cristina Perez, the Spanish 400 metres hurdles record holder), as well as around fifty cyclists.

Previously, he had been chief club doctor at Las Palmas, but he left his position when syringes containing EPO were discovered in the team's dressing room.

Duenas possessed quite the doping arsenal:

Though Ivan Basso and Jan Ullrich were high profile casualties of Operacion Puerto, rumours have continued about other top riders, some of them riding this year's Tour. Indeed, most agree that unless it is re-opened, Operacion Puerto will continue to be a malignant shadow, stalking the sport.

David Millar, who lives in Girona, and last year rode for Saunier Duval, has described Spain as "the wild west" as far as doping is concerned. Pat McQuaid, the International Cycling Union (UCI) president, has also suggested that the doping culture remains most deeply ingrained in Spain.

And the links to Operation Puerto:

Duenas appeared before a French court in Tarbes on Thursday, where he was charged with the "use and possession of plants and poisonous substances." The prosecutor, Gerard Aldige, described the stash of products recovered from the Spaniard's hotel room as a "small pharmacy," containing "syringes, needles and blood bags (and] a multitude of other products, in liquid and sachet form."

According to Velo News, the Spanish doctor involved in Jesus Losa:

Spanish rider Moises Duenas, kicked out of the Tour de France, has blamed a Spanish doctor for his positive test for the blood booster erythropoietin (EPO), the daily El Pais reported on Saturday.

Duenas, who was charged with "use and possession of poisonous substances" before a court at Tarbes, southwestern France on Thursday, had claimed that the products were sold to him by Spanish doctor Jesus Losa.

But the former Euskaltel-Euskadi team doctor denied "ever providing Duenas with prohibited products" and was ready to testify as such.

El Pais said that Losa's name came up several years ago in connection with Scottish rider David Millar and the Cofidis doping affair, but he was never questioned.

Barloworld rider Duenas is one of three cyclists to fail a drugs test during this year's Tour de France along with compatriot Manuel Beltran of Liquigas and Italy's Riccardo Riccò of Saunier-Duval.

Dwain Chambers: Bad news from the judge's chambers

UK sprinter Dwain Chambers today found out that a UK judge will not issue an injunction allowing him to run as a representative of the UK in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.  Story here (Bloomberg):
Sprinter Dwain Chambers failed to have a lifetime suspension from the Olympics lifted by a London judge today and won't be allowed to run for Britain in Beijing next month unless he successfully appeals the ruling.           

Chambers, banned from the Olympic team in 2003 for taking steroids, went to the High Court in London after winning the 100 meters in last weekend's trials in Birmingham. The top two finishers there are usually selected for the U.K. Olympic team.    

Chambers was attempting to get an injunction to be able to run and the court was ``not convinced'' by his arguments, Justice Colin Mackay said. The ruling can be appealed. Jonathan Crystal, Chambers's lawyer, didn't comment as he left the court.    

``It is a matter of regret that Dwain Chambers, an athlete with such undoubted talent, should by his own actions have put himself out of the running to shine on the Olympic stage in Beijing,'' British Olympic Association Chairman Colin Moynihan said in a statement. ``The BOA will continue to send a powerful and important message that nobody found guilty of serious drug cheating offenses should have the honor of wearing a Team GB vest at the Olympic Games.''    

The 30-year-old Chambers was the first athlete to be banned for testing positive for THG, the designer steroid distributed by Balco, the California-based Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative that has been at the center of a U.S. probe of drug use by top athletes.

One can see Chambers was a gifted Sub-10 second 100M sprinter.

He was also stripped of his 2002 European 100-meter title and had his British 100-meter record of 9.86 seconds annulled.    

Chambers was named to the U.K. team for the World Indoor Championships in February after winning a trial. He had threatened legal action if he was omitted.

      Interesting predicament for Chambers.  Is a lifetime ban justified?  Is the ban justified for Chambers who doped up with a number of powerful hormones.

 

Strike trois at the Tour de France: Riccardo Ricco tests positive for EPO

Italian cyclist Riccardo Ricco's claim of a high blood count not withstanding, became the third rider to test for dope at the 2008 Tour de France.  Following reports of a high hematocrit last week (blood level) Ricco said the Tour knew he was naturally loaded with blood.  Looks like he was unnaturally loaded with EPO too. The Tour de France is a race simply addicted to performance enhancing drugs.

To Sporting Life:

Riccardo Ricco, the wearer of the polka dot jersey at the Tour de France, has tested positive for EPO, according to French sports newspaper L'Equipe.

The 24-year-old Italian, won two mountain stages in this year's Tour, at Super-Besse and Bagneres de Bigorre, and holds a 12-point lead in the King of the Mountains competition.

Ricco also came second in this year's Giro d'Italia, and is considered the next great climber in the sport.

Looks like the French police will be busy too:

The Italian rider, who has been detained by French police after being removed from the Saunier-Duval team bus, becomes the third rider to test positive for EPO at this year's Tour after Moises Duenas Nevado and Manuel Beltran.

The French anti-doping authority confirmed Ricco's positive test related to the fourth stage of the Tour, the Cholet time-trial.

"It's for the same product as the other two," Pierre Bordry, president of the French anti-doping agency, said in quotes reported on the BBC Sport website.

Ricco's team packed up the suitcases to head home after the positive test.

Ricco's Saunier-Duval team later announced their withdrawal from the race in the wake of his positive test.

The move will come a surprise to many after Beltran's Liquigas team and Duenas Nevado's Barloworld team continued despite the transgressions of their riders.

Ricco's team-mate Juan Jose Cobo told L'Equipe: "If this [Ricco's test] is confirmed, it is terrible news for the team."

Saunier-Duval's withdrawal will spell the end for the likes of Cobo and Leonardo Piepoli, who won the 10th stage from Pau to Hautacam.

D (dope) Day for UK's Dwain Chambers

Today, the UK's premier sprinter Dwain Chambers learns whether his appeal to the country's Olympic committee will allow the tainted sprinter to compete at Beijing in 2008.

Chambers case is particularly disturbing.  Chambers worked with tainted coach Remi Korchemny who obtained drugs from BALCO.  Chambers did not just use a little nandrolone from supplements; he doped with the cream, and the clear (anabolic steroids) HGH, insulin, and modafinil.

Chambers legal case stems from the BOA (British Olympic Association) lifetime ban for drug-cheats.  Chambers contends this is restraint of trade (interesting; couldn't any common criminal in prison claim this?).  The BOA fears a protracted battle.

A formidable array of opponents line up against the disgraced sprinter.  The Telegraph for instance.  A long list of UK Olympic athletes including Chambers sprinting foe Craig Pickering, oppose the sprinter's Olympic dreams.  Famous UK track coach Frank Dick also opposes the sprinter.

Chambers is seeking a temporary injunction against the British Olympic Association's rule that prevents athletes who have committed a serious doping offence from representing Team GB at future Games. As Chambers becomes the first athlete to challenge the BOA rule in court Jo Pavey, Martyn Rooney and Goldie Sayers, three leading British track and field athletes, have joined the large contingent supporting the 16-year-old bylaw.

Two weeks ago, when the British Athletes' Commission revealed more than 100 members had signed its petition to keep the bylaw, only Craig Pickering, the sprinter, and 800 metres runner Becky Lyne were among Chambers' contemporaries to have put pen to paper. But since then Beijing-bound Pavey, the Commonwealth 5,000m silver medallist, the 400m runner Rooney and javelin thrower Sayers have said yes to the bylaw remaining in place. Helen Clitheroe, Andrew Steele and Will Sharman are among others who have signed the petition along with the former Olympic champions Sally Gunnell and David Hemery.

The Times Online discusses the Chambers legal challenge:

Dwain Chambers will sit in Court 76 at the Royal Courts of Justice in London today and await a verdict that could define his career or end it. If the sprinter is successful in gaining an historic injunction temporarily lifting his Olympic ban, he will be added to Great Britain’s modest list of medal contenders for the Games in Beijing. If he fails then, subject to an appeal, he may have nowhere left to run.

Jonathan Crystal, QC, will argue that the BOA bylaw banning convicted dopers for life is “an unreasonable restraint of trade”. The irony is that Chambers’s trade has been restrained by Euromeetings, an umbrella group of leading promoters who decided last year not to issue invitations to drugs cheats. Chambers has been able to run only at low-level meetings this year and remains excluded from the grand-prix circuit.

Crystal will say that it is unfair that the sprinter has served a two-year doping ban, in accordance with the rules of the IAAF, the sport’s world governing body, but still has an Olympic ban. He will state that other countries do not have such a bylaw and a number of former offenders will be competing in Beijing. Robert Englehart, QC, for the BOA, will ask why it has taken Chambers four years to present his case.

However the Birmingham Post offers a spirited defense of Chambers:

To describe the issue as difficult does not even begin to untangle the many threads that have become so twisted. The High Court will decide on the legal position, whether Chambers can go to Beijing, but there is no one to arbitrate the moral case. Should he be allowed?

The answer to that depends on an individual’s beliefs about the what is good for athletics and what is good for Dwain Chambers the person.

Clearly as a human being Chambers knows he has done wrong and is contrite but more importantly clean of the seven banned substances he once used to cheat himself, his friends and his rivals.

There may be a physiological legacy of the drugs he has taken and some mental benefits having experienced certain high pressure situations he might not otherwise have reached. Both are valid concerns but as things stand neither can be proved - or disproved.

What we are left with, therefore, is a series of related issues each of which seem to point towards Chambers being allowed to run in Beijing.

There is apprehension about the message it would send out, a fear that other, younger athletes would look at his case and deduce that a two-year ban is a small sacrifice to pay for a shot at an Olympic gold medal.

That theory breaks down because if they serve a ban they will have been caught and will have been stripped of their medal.

The Telegraph calls Chambers regimen of drugs (he admits to) "The Magnificant Seven"  Chambers drug cocktail is typical VIcto Conte PED use.

Dwain Chambers took the following seven drugs, according to Victor Conte, of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO), who supplied him:

• Tetrahydrogestrinone (THG): Once undetectable, this is the designer steroid, nicknamed "the clear", that Chambers tested positive for in 2003.
• Testosterone cream: Used in winter to work alongside THG.
• Erythropoietin (EPO): Boosts the production of oxygen-carrying red blood cells and once thought to be used solely in stamina-based sports.
• Human Growth Hormone: By injection and used during the winter to aid recovery from heavy weight sessions.
• Insulin: Another one used during heavy winter training and used in conjunction with dextrose, whey protein and creatine.
• Modafinil: The American sprinter and drug-cheat Kelli White tried to get away with this stimulant as a treatment for narcolepsy. One tablet is taken an hour before competition.
• undefined: Used to accelerate the metabolic rate before races. Two tablets taken one hour before competition.

Daily Steroid Injection

1.  Millard Baker's take on the David Jacobs affair in Plano.  (MesoRX)

2. Barry Bonds's agent suggest major league collusion because 44 year-old Barry doesn't have a job.  (SF Chronicle)

3.  Juiced cop nailed in NYPD random test.  No it's not Sargent Jason Giambi this time.  (NY Daily News)

4.  Jose Canseco gets KOed by a little guy.  (Is this for real?)(The Olympian)

Trevor Graham receives the ban of a lifetime.

Trevor Graham, the man with the dope plan, the man with the binge on a syringe, received a lifetime ban from track activities from the USTAF, the USADA, and the IAAF.  Graham fits into the BALCO puzzle of drug cheats.

Graham, the once leader at Sprint Capital USA, not only led sprinters like Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery down the dope and steroid path, he mailed Victor Conte's syringe with THG (the clear) to the USADA as a tip-off (that sure didn't buy him mercy).  Graham also testified at the BALCO grand jury, only not so truthfully; for his testimony he received a perjury conviction.  Today's lifetime ban appears very harsh.  (here the NY Times says a 2 year ban was considered for Graham in 2006)

To IHT:

Athletics coach Trevor Graham received a lifetime ban from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency Tuesday for his role in helping his athletes obtain performance-enhancing drugs.

Graham has been banned from participating in any event sanctioned by the U.S. Olympic Committee, the IAAF, USA Track and Field or any other group that participates in the World Anti-Doping Agency program.

He was convicted in May of one count of lying to U.S. government investigators about his relationship to an admitted steroids dealer. He's still awaiting sentencing and has asked a judge to toss out his conviction.

Graham already was banned from all USOC-sponsored facilities and had essentially become a pariah in his sport, connected with too many athletes involved in doping — including Marion Jones and former 100-meter world-record holders Justin Gatlin and Tim Montgomery.

The USADA lectured Graham on stiff penalties and deterrence.  Why then are 3 ex-dopers on the USA Olympics team?  Just asking.

"While drug use by athletes is a serious wrong to be addressed with stiff penalties, involvement in doping by a coach is even more reprehensible and must be dealt with through the most severe of all sanctions," USADA CEO Travis Tygart said in a statement. "It is truly disgraceful when a coach uses his position to assist athletes under his care in doping."

Graham was nailed with these offenses:

• Tampering with or attempting to tamper with any part of doping control.
• Possession of prohibited substances and methods.
• Trafficking in any prohibited substance or prohibited method.
• Administration or attempted administration of a prohibited substance or prohibited method to any athlete or assisting, encouraging, aiding, abetting, covering up or any other type of complicity involving an anti-doping rules violation or any attempted violation.

Most of the BALCO athletes moved on after the scandal, and many were found guilty of other legal offenses too, including the imprisoned Marion Jones.

Few of Graham's former athletes are still in athletics. Montgomery, who was banned for life, was sentenced in May to nearly four years in prison for his role in a New York-based check-kiting conspiracy and pleaded guilty July 3 to distributing heroin. Gatlin is serving a four-year doping ban, and Jones is serving a six-month prison sentence for lying to U.S. government investigators about a check-fraud scam and her doping.

The most notable survivor is Shawn Crawford, the defending Olympic 200-meter champion. Crawford will run the 200 in Beijing and now trains with Bob Kersee, who also coaches sprinter Allyson Felix.

Though Crawford wasn't ever involved in the doping scandal, his name came up because Graham was a key player.

David Jacobs, Amanda Earhart-Savell, and NFL lineman Matt Lehr: Weird PED-love triangle

As well documented, heavyweight steroid dealer/user David Jacobs, bodybuilder/fitness model Amanda Savell, and NFL lineman/juicer Matt Lehr appeared to be linked in the past.  Jacobs supplied the juice to Lehr and other unnamed football players.  Jacobs hung with Savell, as the dealers/female bodybuilders are apt to do.  Apparently behind the scenes Savell and Lehr were playing their own field position game...with deadly results.

The Dallas Morning News carried a story on the Plano Plight.

In the months before convicted steroids trafficker David Jacobs killed himself and his girlfriend, the embittered dealer alleged that NFL players used his drugs. But he publicly named only one: Matt Lehr.

Mr. Jacobs, who repeatedly said he wouldn't go public with former customers' names because he did not want to disrupt their lives, made an exception with Mr. Lehr, a former Dallas Cowboys lineman now with the New Orleans Saints.

He said he felt Mr. Lehr and his attorney weren't honest about the NFL player's role in Mr. Jacobs' distribution network.

Jacobs was also jealous of the man he described as his former best friend because he thought Mr. Lehr was interested in his girlfriend.

It was true.

This sounds like a deal going bad, or as they say in 'No Country for Old Men" there 'were a few glitches'.  Steroid dealer to cops, NFL players, and bodybuilders...fem fatale bodybuilder...federal agents...NFL players with millions to lose...quite an explosive cocktail.  And so it went:

"She was in love with me, and I loved her," Mr. Lehr, 29, said in a recent interview, acknowledging for the first time his relationship with Amanda Earhart-Savell, a 30-year-old professional figure competitor and fitness magazine cover girl who also had dated Mr. Jacobs on and off since last year.

Mr. Jacobs, 35, killed Ms. Earhart-Savell in a murder-suicide last month, shattering her body with seven bullet wounds from a .40-caliber semiautomatic Glock 22 that Mr. Jacobs also turned on himself.

Ms. Earhart-Savell's family and friends say a likely scenario is that Mr. Jacobs found evidence of a relationship between her and Mr. Lehr. Mr. Jacobs had told The Dallas Morning News that he had suspected the two were interested in each other for months.

Lehr placed images of Sevall on his MySpace page upon her deminse.  Dude, why does a million-dollar NFL player author a MySpace page anyway?  Read Barrons or something else in your spare time. Plenty of other unsavory things going down too:

Last year, federal agents seized evidence of widespread steroid use by numerous clients from Mr. Jacobs during a raid on his Plano home, including e-mails, text messages and other phone and bank records. He later cooperated, helping investigators connect the dots. He received probation.

Mr. Jacobs also met several times with the NFL about his dealings with Mr. Lehr and several other players, one of whom – another former Cowboy – has been put on notice that he could face a suspension.

It's unclear whether more criminal charges, or league sanctions, will result from Mr. Jacobs' information.

(more on this after the jump)