Too many threads to choose from so back to one of the originals we go...
Today's 7.30 report:
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2013/s3715050.htm
Aussie sport doping details emerge as Government responds
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Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 13/03/2013
Reporter: Caro Meldrum-Hanna
More details of the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority's investigation have come to light as the Cronulla Sharks rugby league club's Chairman steps down and the Government commits extra money to combat drugs in sport.
Transcript
LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: Today the drugs in sport saga claimed another scalp at the Cronulla Sharks Rugby League Club - this time its chairman. At the same time, the Government has announced the anti-doping agency will commit additional investigators to question players. Up until now the man at the centre of the doping allegations has been Steve Dank, a biochemist employed by NRL and AFL clubs to administer supplements to their players. But he also had an assistant who up until now has remained nameless. Caro Meldrum-Hanna has the story.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA, REPORTER: Another day, another casualty at the Cronulla Sharks.
DAMIAN IRVINE, FMR CHAIRMAN, CRONULLA SHARKS: I'm standing down as chairman from the board and of the board of directors today. The club needs some time to investigate and plan the way forward without added distraction and emotion.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: This time the axe has fallen on chairman Damian Irvine. Last Friday the Sharks suspended their coach and sacked four senior staff amidst an insider investigation into the use of performance-enhancing peptides. On Sunday, Irvine volunteered information that players were also being given TV-500, a supplement traditionally used in horse racing to build muscle on thoroughbreds.
DAMIAN IRVINE: I'm going to get into detail. I said I shouldn't have made them at the time, and I said that. I put my hand up. When I say under duress, everyone's been under a lot of duress...
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: The man accused of supplying the Sharks with horse drugs is sports scientist and biochemist Steve Dank. He's at the centre of the current ASADA investigation into at least five NRL and AFL teams suspected of using Dank to administer performance-enhancing peptides and prohibited substances.
STEVE MASCORD, RUGBY LEAGUE WEEK: Cronulla are really a shambles at the moment and they are leaderless. Their players showed up to recovery session on Monday and there was no doctor or no physio to look at their injuries.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: ASADA is also investigating Manly Rugby League Club, where three players are believed to have used performance-enhancing peptides. Manly coach Geoff Toovey is maintaining his club has done nothing wrong.
GEOFF TOOVEY, COACH, MANLY FOOTBALL CLUB: We've got no problems with our procedures at the club, and quite confident with things that happen within the club that time.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: ASADA is focussing in on Manly's secretive supplements regime from 2006 to 2010 - run by Dank. He discussed that regime in an exclusive interview with 7.30 last.
STEVE DANK, BIOCHEMIST (11 February 2013): We used a lot of supplements, to be honest, which was no difference to a lot of other clubs in terms of protein powders and vitamins and amino acids. We'd use a little bit of calf's blood there during the time, but again that was no different to what else was around and appropriate in the world of sport at the time...
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: So nothing was, nothing fell over the line or over the edge?
STEVE DANK: No.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: No prohibitive substances were administered?
STEVE DANK: No. No.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: Dank wasn't working alone at Manly. He had an assistant, known only by the nickname "the Gazelle". He also assisted Dank at two other football club - the NRL's Cronulla and the AFL's Essendon - where he provided a wide variety of peptides to players. The Gazelle is this man, Darren Hidder, the owner of Advanced Sports Nutrition, or ASN. It specialises in manufacturing peptides and supplements for weightlifters and body builders. Hidder has told 7.30 he sold a variety of ASN supplements including Humanifort and the peptide and protein blends Extreme Blast and The Mix to Manly and Cronulla players out of the boot of his car at the club's car parks. Hidder sold ASN supplements to Dank and his co-directors at the Medical Rejuvenation Clinic - set up by Dank in 2009 with bodybuilder Adam Van Spanje and his business partner Zaheer Azmi. Van Spanje and co-director Azmi were closely connected to outlaw motorcycle groups the Rebels and the Comancheros. Azmi is also believed to have worked at one stage for a Kings Cross night club part-owned by alleged underworld figure John Ibrahim. The Medical Rejuvenation Clinic sells a wide variety of supplements, including the peptides at the centre of the current investigation into performance-enhancing drugs in football. The clinic also sells supplements prohibited for use by elite athletes. It's Dank's dual role consulting to football teams, while at the same time running a private peptide clinic selling prohibited substances that has set alarm bells rings with ASADA.
(to Richard Ings) Do you believe there is a link between those companies and the football codes?
RICHARD INGS, FORMER CHIEF EXECUTIVE, ASADA: Where you have an athlete support person in general, who has a business which is involved in the distribution of substances which are banned by sport, this will raise alarm bells for those in anti-doping circles to just be absolutely sure that those products have not found their way into any level of sport.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: Dank has told 7.30 that he and his co-directors at the Medical Rejuvenation Clinic have been interviewed and cleared by the Australian Crime Commission. Speaking to 7.30 today on the phone, Dank's assistant Darren Hidder said he was also interviewed and cleared by the Australian Crime Commission last year. He also told 7.30 he has a client list of around 20 players from NRL teams Manly, the Sharks and the Cowboys, and that they independently buy non-prohibited substances from him. Steve Dank would certainly argue and has put to 7.30, as do many sports scientists and people in the football and sporting community, that a peptide simply a supplement, it is not a performance enhancing substance. What's your response?
RICHARD INGS: We wouldn't be here today talking about these issues and we wouldn't have the purge of the senior management of the Cronulla Sharks if we were talking about regular non-banned nutritional vitamin supplements. The very first thing that ASADA will work through is to ascertain if the substance in question is banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency - and we are talking about seriously banned performance-enhancing substances.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: A crucial part of the problem is the great deal of confusion surrounding what is and isn't banned. Today the anti-doping authority finally responded to 7.30's repeated requests for the exact dates the peptides currently in question were specifically listed as banned on their register. This document reveals that the peptide Dank used on players at Cronulla, CJC-1295, was specifically list as prohibited in September 2011, three months after Dank left the Sharks. And the peptide Dank used at Essendon in 2012, AOD-9604, is still not specifically listed by ASADA as prohibited.
ANDREW DEMETRIOU, CEO, AFL: ASADA will be very thorough and diligent. These things don't happen quickly, there's lots of people that have to be interviewed, there's lots of things that have to be checked, and our expectation will be that this will go on for months.
CARO MELDRUM-HANNA: Late today, ASADA told rugby league chiefs they have ten additional investigators, ready to delve even deeper if the clubs do their part and make the players available for questioning.
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