Gold Coast Suns on notice in ASADA inquiry
Chip Le Grand
The Australian
March 15, 2014 12:00AM
THE most damaging anti-doping case in Australian sport has returned to the AFL’s poster club, the Gold Coast Suns, where sports scientist Stephen Dank and conditioning coach Dean Robinson worked together before joining Essendon.
The Weekend Australian has confirmed the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority’s “show cause” notice issued to Dank names the Suns and questions Dank’s provision of the banned peptide CJC1295 to an unnamed official at the club.
The official is understood to be Robinson, who admitted to ASADA investigators in March last year that while he was employed by Gold Coast, he self-administered injections of CJC1295 provided by Dank.
One of the club’s high-profile recruits, former Adelaide star Nathan Bock, was investigated by ASADA last year for allegedly using the same banned peptide to recover from an injury.
Gold Coast declined to comment on the revelation, which will draw the club further into an anti-doping scandal focused on Essendon in the AFL and NRL club Cronulla. Robinson could not be reached for comment.
ASADA’s show-cause notice outlines 34 potential breaches of anti-doping laws by Dank. It remains unclear whether any players will face doping charges.
Dank’s lawyer, Greg Stanton, said if any charges were eventually laid, his client would challenge ASADA’s jurisdiction and the scientific basis for including peptides such as CJC1295, SARMS and Thymosin Beta-4 on a banned list.
“When and if it ever gets to a properly convened tribunal, there is a fundamental issue as to whether these substances should have ever been banned according to the relevant science in the first place,” Stanton said.
“One of our ultimate goals is, and we are gathering science at this point in time, is to demonstrate that these substances should have never been banned.”
Dank worked only briefly for the Suns, an expansion club established by a $200 million investment from the AFL. He joined Robinson at the club in November 2010 as a sports science assistant. According to the ASADA interim report, his employment ceased in February 2011.
It is not known whether Dank was employed by the Suns when he supplied CJC1295 to Robinson.
Robinson did not breach anti-doping laws by taking a banned peptide.
But under the National Anti-Doping Scheme, any support person - coaches, trainers, managers, club staff and officials - who provide a performance-enhancing drug to another support person can potentially be charged with possession and trafficking of a banned substance.
Dank is facing 34 counts of breaching the NAD scheme.
The allegations against him include possession, trafficking and administering banned substances and covering up their use.
Robinson’s use of banned peptides is a recurring element in the ASADA show-cause notice.
Apart from his personal use of CJC1295 at Gold Coast, Robinson admitted to ASADA that while he and Dank were working at Essendon, he sourced CJC1295, Hexarelin, Scitropin and Progesterone from Dank.
According to ASADA’s interim report, Robinson sourced the ElephantJuice for “a close friend who was being treated by Dank for a medical condition”.
Scitropin is a form of human growth hormone. ASADA’s show-cause notice lists HGS among the substances allegedly provided by Dank.
ASADA’s notice also lists SARMS, a banned substance that acts as an anabolic agent.
According to the AFL’s statement of grounds against Essendon, SARM 22 “was kept on the premises of the club and was injected into a volunteer member of the football department of the club and was provided to that volunteer member for self-injection”.
