When Victor Conte is asked if he would go under oath to say he hasn’t helped a single athlete cheat since he got out of prison in 2005, his reply is forthright.
“The answer is yes,” he said. “I have never helped one athlete use any sort of prohibited substance or prohibited method.” But even Conte accepts that many people won’t believe him. He is aware he may never lose the ‘cheater’ tag.
It was Conte who ran the BALCO lab where he handed out undetectable steroids known as ‘The Clear’ and ‘The Cream’ that helped prominent athletes such as UK sprinter Dwain Chambers. BALCO also implicated global athletics stars Tim Montgomery and Marion Jones, and baseball icon Barry Bonds. The latter has always declared his innocence.
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Conte pleaded guilty to money laundering and a steroid distribution charge, and spent four months in prison, but 40 other charges were dropped by federal prosecutors in the US.
He saw it as a victory against Jeff Novitzky, the FBI agent who investigated the case. But his open admissions of helping athletes to dope is why many believe that the Californian should not be allowed to work in boxing. But he is, and with great success.
(Image: Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)
“I’ve had 30 world champions,” he proudly declares. It’s a sport he guesses that “60 per cent” of fighters are cheating but he insists none of the ones he works with are.
If you’ve watched a big fight recently, you’ll have no doubt seen his company’s logo on a pair of shorts. SNAC – Scientific Nutrition for Advanced Conditioning – is a facility in California used by some of the biggest names in boxing where they are given expert nutritional advice as well as access to different technology for training.
“I do believe that some of the scientific methods that I have developed including the use of “low oxygen” during high intensity training and “high oxygen” to accelerate healing and muscle recovery after training are helping the boxers to significantly improve their performances without the use of PEDs,” Conte said.
British stars such as Amir Khan and Nicola Adams have been previous users of the facility, while rising light-heavyweight star and Rio Olympics bronze medallist Joshua Buatsi is a current member of Conte’s team.
(Image: ETIENNE LAURENT/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
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Then there are US stars such as Devin Haney, Terence Crawford, Claressa Shields and more. Conte points out that since he was released from prison, no athlete he has worked with has ever tested positive for a banned substance.
“Do you believe that once a cheater always a cheater?,” he said. “Do you believe in second chances? I understand there are people who will always be haters, who will always be critical, who will never trust me but I don’t let that stop me. I continue to do the right thing. I’m an open book.
“There are people who believe in second chances and there are people who – for whatever reason – don’t. There are people who think, ‘If he was smart enough to do it before then he is smart enough to do it again’.
“I’m smart enough to help create a programme that is the best in the world. It wouldn’t exist without me. Think about that. There would be no VADA without me.”
VADA is the Voluntary Anti-Doping Association, a testing agency set up in 2011 by Dr Margaret Goodman, a former ringside physician who is an advocate for fighter safety and an inductee of the sport’s Hall of Fame, and Dr Flip Homansky, who also worked on big fights in Las Vegas.
Conte advised Goodman on what needed to be done to catch cheats in boxing. He also introduced her to Dick Pound, the founder of the World Anti-Doping Agency.
(Image: Getty Images)
It has to be put to him that because he helped advise how to test for drugs in boxing, as someone who was an expert at beating anti-doping in the past, he could easily circumnavigate the current systems. “Yes is the honest answer,” he said.
Then why isn’t he? Well, he claims that now the risk is too high but during the BALCO days it was too easy to cheat and the “overwhelming majority” were doing it in the sports he worked in.
“At BALCO [times] they weren’t doing the testing right,” he said. “VADA is way more stringent than testing was then, it was a joke. They didn’t test for EPO, growth hormone. It is because the testing was inept. And you learn this is what the other guys are doing, you decide do you want to do what the other guys are doing or by the official rules?
“BALCO will always stick with me and there will always be people that once they have an opinion they can’t change it. I have a track record. If some people look at it and understand it and interpret it right they know the real story but if people only remember what was the headline news that was all based on lies.
“I was breaking the rules, if they really understood the context and the overwhelming majority of others at the elite level winning gold medals were also doing it, well then is it cheating?
(Image: Corbis via Getty Images)
“Yes, it is absolutely cheating. Is it wrong? Yes it is wrong. Do you want to compete in sports and be a winner? It is [was] use or lose. You have to do what you have to do to be competitive. As an example, look at Lance Armstrong. You think it was just him? You gotta do what you got to do.”
So what about boxing and doping now? “It is rampant,” said Conte. “The only way to shut it down is testing in between [fights]. If I had to give you a guess it is probably 60 per cent [of fighters doping]. Only a small percentage of boxers are tested using stringent methods like VADA.”
Fighters sign up to VADA voluntarily. There are different levels of testing for fight contracts depending on how much the boxers and promoters are willing to pay.
The cheapest is testing from 30 days out of the bout date and on the night of the contest. The most expensive starts at 12 weeks out. Those in the top 15 of the WBC rankings in each weight are supposed to be under 24/7 and 365 days a year testing but this is not as stringent as it seems.
A problem is that VADA does not adjudicate and only offers a testing service so it is up to the governing body where the samples were taken to hand out suspensions. That led to the mess surrounding Conor Benn’s two adverse analytical findings for clomifene in VADA tests. One was under the WBC programme, the other part of a fight contract for a bout with Chris Eubank Jr in October 2022 which was cancelled.
UK Anti-Doping is still investigating the matter. Benn continues to insist he is innocent and has never taken performance-enhancing drugs. “He could have said, ‘I don’t know where I got it’,” claimed Conte. “There are many products out there that are contaminated that cause a positive test.
“[Say] ‘I’ve been unable to find out what the source is, I’m not a drug user but the answer is I don’t know where I got it from’. He would have got two years and the two years would have been up in July and he would be fighting.”
Conte has full praise for British boxer Anthony Joshua for always committing to VADA testing since the beginning of his career but he admits he has the “money to do so”. He can’t understand why all other big-earning boxers don’t always do it to show their fans that they are clean. Many do, of course. Here in the UK, top professionals are also subject to UK Anti-Doping testing.
“Do I believe doping is rampant here in the UK? Yes. Read the statistics on the number of tests done by UKAD and it is so ridiculous,” he said. “Talk about inept.”
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In UKAD’s defence, the number of tests carried out in boxing has increased. From April 2023 to March 2024, 414 tests were carried out on British Boxing Board of Control professionals but 227 of them were ‘in competition’ which is just on the day of a bout.
“To fail announced testing, that’s not a drug test, that’s an IQ test,” said Conte. So how are some boxers allegedly cheating if, as Conte says, VADA is so stringent? One way he claims is ‘microdosing’.
“They take a dosage that you would use one time a week and they divide it by seven and they time it the way on their whereabouts form that they tell the doping control officer to come at 9am or whenever,” said Conte. “They know the TE ratio is 4:1. Normal is 1:1. That means your body produces 50mg of testosterone per week. That’s 7mg a day but you can go up 28mg a day.
“They can calculate the number of milligrams they’re microdosing to triple your testosterone level and they’re still flying under the radar. I’m not the only one who knows this allowed limits.”
There are other ways, of course. Another is the ‘three strike rule’ meaning an athlete can skip up to two tests in an 18-month period without punishment. Then there is the fact VADA only works when implemented properly. “I advise all of my boxers to do the stringent drug testing of VADA to protect themselves as much as possible from opponents using PEDs,” said Conte.
“There is no testing that is foolproof but stringent testing for an 8-12 week period before a bout can possibly reduce the potential adverse health effects of facing an opponent that has just tapered off of PEDs.”
But it all comes back around to asking Conte why, if he knows all this, does he not help his fighters dope now?
(Image: (Image: Getty))
“I’m a truth speaker,” claimed Conte. “Do I have baggage? Yes I do. But I’m a happy guy, I’m a rich guy. I have a brand new $600,000 Rolls Royce that I drive, I got a brand new Bentley that my wife drives, I have tens of millions of dollars in the bank, I own 10 houses.
“Do I need this? I’m 74 years old so why would I continue to do this if I was doing bad stuff? Why would I destroy the legacy of my reinvention? Boxing is much different than other sports because the objective is to do bodily harm and brain damage is much more common in boxing than in other non-contact sports.
“I have not in the last 20 years and would not ever help a boxer use PEDs because of the damage that can be caused to opponents by much faster and more powerful punches.”
But how can Conte be sure that the boxers he works with are not using banned substances? “Here’s how I prevent my guys from doing drugs,” he explained. “I do comprehensive blood testing routinely and I know all the markers of when you’re using s***.
“I’m shaking these people down. If someone is doing something then I cut them. The SNAC train will continue to roll. If one jumps off the train then there’s another. I got five, six elite boxers every week coming to me. I can’t take everyone on. There’s great demand to be with SNAC. Life is about risks. The boxers are trusting me. A lot of people take the heat and people say, ‘What the f*** are you doing with this guy?’.
“Some people don’t want to work with me for that reason. When I talk to people and they understand what I can do for them and explain many technologies that only exist in my facility they want in. I guess they take a risk and I take a risk. Since 2005 until now, I’ve met with USADA, I’ve met with WADA, I’ve met with VADA and gave all three entities all the information that I have. What else can I do to make people understand that I’m clean?” Questions will remain, of course.
Conte pays the athletes in sponsorship fees and covers travel and accommodation to work at his facility in California. He continues to earn huge amounts through the sales of legal supplements and sees himself as a “project manager”.
“Money is not going to be my motivation,” he said. “I make money while I sleep.”
Conte does not bristle at any of the questions during an almost two-hour interview in his hotel suite before Buatsi beat Willy Hutchinson in September at Wembley Stadium. He defends himself and he bites back at any accusations made. He’s told his BALCO story many times before, it is explained in detail in a hit Netflix documentary called ‘Untold: Hall of Shame’ but how, if he’s so passionate now about winning clean, does he regret his past?
“Do I have regrets?” he added. “Absolutely. I mean was I guilty of wrongdoing? 100 per cent. Was I reckless? Absolutely. Did I think about my kids, and the damage it would do to them? No. I was not being a good father. I had a goal, I had a vision, I was so absorbed in what I was doing, I didn’t take the time to think about, ‘What if?’.
“What I knew was these were very soft crimes. I proved that. That’s why I got four months. They lied and blew everything up but once I got good legal counsel, they settled. In the end, Barry Bonds walked away, he prevailed in his case. Everything was expunged. They spent $70m and here’s what they got on Barry Bonds. Zero.”
Conte believes sport will never be clean because those who would financially suffer from positive tests are those at the very top, while there are not strong enough deterrents for the athletes, particularly in boxing. Ryan Garcia received just a one-year suspension from the New York State Athletic Commission this year for testing positive for ostarine around his fight with Haney.
But Conte hopes that he can repair his reputation by working in boxing. The American’s first love was track and field but he knows he is not wanted in that sport. He worked in boxing during the BALCO days with Shane Mosley, who was another implicated. It is a love of Muhammad Ali from his childhood days which keeps his passion going in the sweet science for this sport scientist.
“I would say not too long ago that 80 per cent of people in boxing hate me,” he said. “I’m trying to be a role model. I want kids to see that you can make a mistake and that’s not the end of life. I got told, ‘That guy is done and he will never be able to do s*** for the rest of his life’. I’ve proven that’s not true.”