The drugs in sport headlines are evil. But the real devil is in the detail. And, as in most hellish scenarios, fortune or fame is the root cause.
This scenario involves crime gangs, elite athletes, mad scientists and crooked doctors.
The Australian Crime Commission (ACC) has exposed a sinister sporting world. Let’s walk through it and meet the key characters.
THE CRIMINAL
Crime gangs, possibly linked to Italian mafia and Russian mobs, were selling – at 140 per cent profit – banned performance-enhancing drugs to Australian athletes.
The gangs were a double-edged sword of dealing drugs and match-fixing.
Effectively, a crime gang could sell a player drugs to enhance their performance, then influence them to perform below their newly-enhanced ability.
The ACC said gangs and individual criminals spend years cultivating relationships with players “with the ultimate aim of having the athlete participate in activities such as match fixing”.
The crime gangs were already entrenched because of the competition for sponsorship money between, and within, Australia’s sport codes.
“In essence, sporting clubs and codes appear rarely to question the source of money being invested,” the ACC said.
Crucially, crime gangs exploit legal loopholes where supplying some substances isn’t a crime in Australia, despite the drugs being banned by world sport.
THE ATHLETE
Elite, state and club-level athletes were using the banned drugs.
At the elite fortune and fame-chasing level, the ACC identified “multiple players in one code from a number of clubs” as using banned drugs known as peptides.
Peptides increase hormone growth, quicken recovery from soft tissues injuries and possibly can’t be detected.
One specific type of peptide included extract from pig brain, another extract from calves’ blood.
The ACC found a case of team-based doping, orchestrated by club officials and coaching staff.
Peptides were also being used by what the ACC termed sub-elite athletes in a number of sporting codes, and also by club-level athletes.
THE SPORTS SCIENTIST
Some sports scientists were orchestrating the use of the new-age drugs, taking advantage of their increasing influence over decision-making within clubs.
Some were giving substances to elite athletes that were untested or yet to be approved for human use.
“Some sports scientists and doctors are experimenting on professional sportspersons in an effort to determine if particular substances can improve performance without being detected,” the ACC said.
THE CROOKED DOCTOR
Doctors were a “key conduit” for peptides and hormones to reach athletes.
“In some cases, medical practitioners … are engaging in lax, fraudulent and unethical prescribing practices, such as prescribing controlled drugs in false names,” the ACC said.
Other doctors simply dispensed the drugs directly to patients without a prescription; or through a pharmacy owned by the doctor with no record attached.
“Some of these doctors are also implicated in experimenting on players, by providing them with different substances in order to determine the effects on their performance,” the ACC said.
WHAT THE CEOS OF AUSTRALIA’S MAJOR SPORTING BODIES SAID:
* NRL’S DAVID SMITH: “We’ve worked with the Crime Commission in the last week or so, and information has come forward for NRL specifically that affects more than one player and more than one club.”* AFL’S ANDREW DEMETRIOU: “The report findings are deeply concerning on a number of levels for all sports fans, athletes and administrators.”
“With the issue of performance-enhancing drugs, we were made privy to (it) by the Australian Crime Commission. It came as a shock as we have a very thorough and rigorous testing regime.”
* ARU’S BILL PULVER: “Today is a very timely wake-up call for all professional sports in Australia. We were aware for some time of issues relating to performance enhancing drugs, but less aware of connections to organised crime and potential match fixing.”
* CA’S JAMES SUTHERLAND: “Specifically the AFL and NRL have advised they have concerns arising out of this report. But as a collective we are united in the need for firm action.”
* FFA’S DAVID GALLOP: “There is nothing specific in relation to football in relation to this report. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t join in the general concern about the issues that are raised.”
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