Doping in sport; it's not just the athletes

An athlete dopes.  How did they gain access to the drug, the needles, or the IV?

How does an athlete take a litre of blood from themselves, store it, and and re-introduce their blood back into their bodies?

By themselves?

Coaches, trainers, doctors, and pharmacies are involved.  This is the other side of doping that has always been in the dark.

One study (1), which I find disturbing, suggests that team doctors are supplying banned performance enhancing drugs to their athletes but awe shucks, the poor uneducated doctors aren't aware the drugs are banned.  The study suggests that athletes are caught doping, and are punished, but it was the doctors fault and the doc didn't know any better.

Maybe that mistake occurs rarely, but athletes have to get controlled substances from somewhere.

Taking out the users (athletes) is needed, but lets not be naive to the fact that the dealers need to be exposed and taken down as well.

Here's a news story that reveals a recently closed down anti-aging clinic, Biogenesis, was a major supplier of performance enhancing drugs to a laundry list of athletes and sports doctors, coaches, and personal trainers.

A Miami Clinic Supplies Drugs to Sports' Biggest Names - Page 1 - News - Miami - Miami New Times

There was the infamous BALCO drug scandal (2002) (2), where pharmacists, coaches, doctors, and supplement sellers were implicated in a sophisticated drug supply chain that supplied athletes like Barry Bonds and Marion Jones.

The guy who ran BALCO, a sport supplement company, and who supplied illegal drugs to athletes  served a three month jail sentence but now runs a business called "Scientific Nutrition for Advanced Conditioning" (SNAC).

Apparently he no longer sells banned drugs.  Maybe this guy saw his wrong and is a bad guy gone good.  Maybe not.

Looks like where there is a lot of supplement use, drug use may be present as well.

It's not only the athletes who gain fame and fortune from cheating, everyone connected to that athlete benefits as well.  The coaches, trainers, doctors, managers.. they all benefit, and past doping scandals show that each of these key players were implicated.

The athlete is the tip of the doping iceberg.

(1) www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23322892

(2) BALCO Scandal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia