Monday, October 20, 2003
Updated: October 21, 7:44 PM ET
Conte once worked with Herbie Hancock
Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO -- A former bass player once known as
"Walkin' Fish," who left the music world to start a nutritional
supplements lab, is no longer playing a backup role. He's now in
the spotlight as the focus of a drug probe involving some of the
nation's top sports stars.
Victor Conte played with groups such as Tower of Power in the
1970s. He worked with jazz pianist Herbie Hancock in 1980. Then he
moved to a different stage, creating supplements that quickly
became popular with stars in sports ranging from baseball to
football to track.
Conte's lab was raided by the Internal Revenue Service and a
team of drug agents in early September, and he's now the target of
a federal grand jury probe. He's also accused of supplying athletes
with a new designer steroid that is rocking the world of track and
field.
New York Yankees first baseman Jason Giambi became the latest athlete to acknowledge he has been subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury. Sprinter Kelli White and shot putter Kevin Toth have also said they received subpoenas.
"I didn't do anything wrong," Giambi said Monday at a World
Series workout in Miami. "To be honest with you, I really don't
know much about it. I really don't know what it's about."
An attorney for Barry Bonds told the San Francisco Chronicle
that Bonds was also subpoenaed and will testify Dec. 4. The home of
Bonds' personal trainer, Greg Anderson, was raided last month in
conjunction with the raid on Conte's lab.
"They have verbally told me that Barry is not a target,"
lawyer Michael Rains said. "I called and invited the prosecuting
attorney to sit down with me and possibly even with Barry at some
date before his appearance to see if we could hash out what it is
they need to know and whether or not Barry has any useful
information."
Conte, who runs the Burlingame-based Bay Area Co-Operative
Laboratory, or BALCO, has said in e-mails that athletes have told
him that 40 Olympic and professional athletes have been subpoenaed.
Federal officials have refused to discuss whether a grand jury
is looking into Conte or BALCO. The scope of the probe is unclear.
Being subpoenaed does not imply that any of the athletes has done
anything wrong.
"My client is innocent until proven guilty," Conte's attorney,
Robert Holley, said Monday in a telephone interview. "So far as I
know, he is the target of the investigation."
In addition to being the subject of the federal probe, Conte was
named by an anonymous track coach as the source of a substance that
turned out to be a previously undetectable steroid,
tetrahydrogestrinone, or THG. Conte has denied he was the source.
The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency said last week it had retested
hundreds of samples from track and field athletes after identifying
THG, and that several had tested positive during the U.S. track
championships at Stanford in late June. They now face two-year
suspensions for using a banned substance.
On Tuesday, track and field's world governing body said it will
retest drug samples from the World Championships held near Paris in
August to search for THG. The International Association of
Athletics Federations said it has about 400 urine samples from that
meet.
Any positive findings would lead to retroactive
disqualifications, including stripping of any medals, and two-year
bans.
On Monday, NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said the league may
retest its samples for the presence of THG. Steroid use is banned
by the NFL, and violators are subject to suspension.
"It's a possibility," Aiello said. "We are not ruling it
out."
Major League Baseball said Saturday it will be unable to retest
samples taken this year for THG, but plans to discuss with players
whether to add it to the list of banned substances.
Conte worked as a bass player from 1965 to 1983, collaborating
on 15 albums. One of the bands in which he played was called Pure
Food and Drug Act -- perhaps an ironic foreshadowing of his future
career.
He and a cousin, guitarist Bruce Conte, started a band called
Common Ground and then moved to the soul group Tower of Power from
1977 to 1979. Victor Conte played on one album with the group, the
1978 release "We Came to Play."
The Conte cousins started a band called Jump Street in 1979, and
Victor moved on to that gig with Hancock. He was called "Walkin'
Fish" by fellow musicians "for reasons obvious to those who have
had the pleasure of seeing him onstage," one guitarist said.
Then he left the music world in the early 1980s to start BALCO,
which analyzes blood and urine from athletes and then prescribes a
regimen of supplements to compensate for vitamin and mineral
deficiencies.
Among its clients are top track stars, as well as baseball's
Barry Bonds and the NFL's Bill Romanowski. Bonds has been a BALCO
client since the winter of 2000. In the June issue of Muscle &
Fitness magazine, he credited Conte for a personalized program that
includes nutritional supplements.
This is not the first time Conte has been at the center of a
drug case.
When four separate tests before the 2000 Sydney Olympics showed
U.S. shot putter C.J. Hunter had 1,000 times the allowable amount
of the steroid nandrolone in his system, Conte took the blame,
claiming the positive tests were the result of contaminated iron
supplements he had supplied to Hunter.
Conte said Hunter, the former husband of Olympic sprint champion
Marion Jones, took the same supplement used by sprinters Linford
Christie and Merlene Ottey -- both of whom were suspended by world
track officials after testing positive for nandrolone.
And a doctor with a long association with BALCO was the one who
supplied sprinter Kelli White with the stimulant modafinil, which
White says she took for the sleep disorder narcolepsy.
White tested positive for modafinil this summer at the World
Championships, putting her gold medals in the 100 and 200 meters at risk.
