Capel might be willing to whistle blow!

[white is right]

Yes he is bitter at what happened to him, but there is grains of truth in this statement.....TAMPA - Here's the thing about weed, John Capel is saying. It doesn't shave any seconds off your 100-meter dash. It doesn't make your hands any more sure. It doesn't make you stronger, or quicker, or more invincible.

"It just makes you eat a lot," the former Olympic sprinter turned Arena Football League hopeful says.

Seven years ago, this was one of track's rising stars, the 200-meter champion at the 2000 Olympic trials and a gold medal contender at that year's Sydney games.

Now, a two-year suspension for a positive marijuana test has landed him here, in an anonymous booth inside a Channelside restaurant where the topic of conversation at the moment is the munchies.

All of it makes for a fitting portrait of an athlete at the bottom of a downward spiral. Except for one thing: Capel, 28, doesn't see it that way. Not in the slightest.

See, Capel smoked weed. And he'll tell you all about it, from the joint he smoked at age 8 to the four drug tests that he says he has passed since his suspension.

But he'll also tell you that he was "relieved" when he was suspended, that the world that he left when he tested positive last spring is far darker than anyone on the outside can imagine.

"If you want to know about a sport," Capel says, "talk to an athlete."

He'll tell you about athletes who would pay $50,000 every three months for their cycles of drugs. He'll tell you about the "personal doctors" that hung around the scene. He'll tell you about coaches that he says would bring sprinters to special "camps" for the sole purpose of "doping them up."

"Right now there is going to be a 10-year gap where kids won't get any better at track and field or football or nothing because everybody is going to go out there and try to run like Justin Gatlin or (others)," Capel says. "They are going to go out there trying that stuff. All that stuff was unnatural. ... Kids don't understand that."

He'll tell you about watching fans cheer wildly after a 2005 race in which Gatlin, who accepted an eight-year ban in August after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs, passed him.

"After that, when I crossed the finish line and I saw how the people reacted to him. ... I'm like, 'They don't know he's taking something?' " Capel says.

What does all of that have to do with marijuana?

"Weed was a fault of mine," he says. "I want people to understand, it is a fault of mine, but you can come back. You can come back from smoking weed. You can stop smoking weed, get back on the track, and you can compete.

"But tell them boys to get off steroids and come back to the track and compete. They can't compete at the same level. They've fallen off."

Capel says he isn't sure if he wants to return to track. He enjoys his time with his wife, Sandy (they met as middle school students in Brooksville), his two daughters, and his 5-month-old son.

Besides, he is convinced he can still play football (a seventh-round pick of the Bears in 2001, he was released by the club in part because of his marijuana issues).

Though Storm coach Tim Marcum says he thinks Capel can play, the wide receiver is probably a longshot: Receiver is the team's deepest position, and the club was crunched for numbers before Capel arrived.

But whatever happens, he says he wants the world to know this:

"If people label me a pothead, okay," Capel says. "But you know what? Once I grow out of this pothead stage, what can you label me as? But when Justin Gatlin goes through his whole life, no matter how old he gets, and Marion Jones goes through her whole life, no matter how old she gets, they'll still be labeled as cheaters. I don't have that label over my head. And I thank God for that."

[Last modified February 14, 2007, 01:07:28

 

[jared]

Interesting article. I'd love to get a more in-depth look into the darker side of track over the last 20-30 years. Anyone know of any good books/articles/websites?

 

[white lightning]

Great article. How much do you want to bet that very few white sprinters from the US ever were even offered those special vitamins.

It is just the way of the world these days.That is what makes guys like Wariner so special.He is a skinny kid who just whoops the pants off the roided out guys.I love it! I give Capel alot of respect for telling it like it is.Hopefully he can get a shot in football for a brief time.Edited by: white lightning

 

[Don Wassall]

Interesting article. I'd love to get a more in-depth look into the darker side of track over the last 20-30 years. Anyone know of any good books/articles/websites?

Do a search on Col. Callan's posts herein the Track forum. He's written numerous excellent posts about track's "dark side."

 

[ToughJ.Riggins]

Interesting stuff, I wonder how many of the sub 10 second blacks (there were only around 40 as of August 27 2004)
were dopers? http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/002635.htmlEdited by: ToughJ.Riggins

 

[white is right]

Interesting stuff, I wonder how many of the sub 10 second blacks (there were only around 40 as of August 27 2004)
were dopers? This is a serious response maybe all 40, that's how rife juice abuse is in the century. If anybody was clean it was maybe Jimmy Hines since juicing was linked to throwers in this time period.http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/002635.html

 

[ToughJ.Riggins]

Yeah I'm sure the Balco scandal is nothing new, but at least the Balco Scandal wasn't an officiating coverup it was one of undetection. Lets hope officiating coverup days are over, at least for the Olympics . I don't think other countries would let an American white or black get away with it at the Olympics anymore unless they were getting huge payoffs because of all the recent exposures of scandals.

 

[white is right]

Here is an interesting story about the depth of drug abuse among gym rats ie weekend warriors. Also this article mentions Flo-Juice err Flo-Jo.....

Scotland's new needle culture
MICHELLE VERROKEN

IT'S LEGAL, it's undetectable and it's claimed it allows sportsmen and women to increase their muscle bulk by 30lbs in just two months while also drastically cutting down their body fat. Not only that, but it's believed to repair the injured body in a fraction of the time of the natural healing process, is increasingly cheap and may even make you look younger. No wonder human growth hormone (HGH) has become the drug of choice for both club and elite competitors.

Until now health professionals and sports administrators have only been able to guess at the scale of its use. This week, however, Scotland on Sunday has obtained evidence that reveals the shockingly widespread use of a drug which gives users a vital extra edge, but which can also lead to an early grave.

The key to uncovering the inexorable spread of HGH is a scheme run as part of the Needle Exchange Schemes, which were originally set up to prevent the spread of HIV-AIDS by swapping drug users' old needles for new ones. Health workers were surprised to find an increasing number of clients were anabolic steroid users.

In many parts of the UK, the schemes were recently extended to include steroid users, who had traditionally been unwilling to rub shoulders with addicts, which in turn led to special needle exchange clinics being set up at gyms around the country. As with the existing needle exchange programme, data relating to the type and amount of needles exchanged has been collated and analysed. The results have staggered health professionals and sports administrators.

Of the total number of needles exchanged in the UK last year, around 50% were used to inject heroin or other illegal drugs, but the remaining 50% - the longer thicker needles able to penetrate deep into muscle groups - were used to inject steroids. In some inner-city pockets, that figure was as high as 70%. Clinic reports indicate that many users are now turning to the use of human growth hormone. Informed estimates suggest that as many as 21% have turned to HGH alongside the more traditional performance-enhancing drugs. In the Greater Glasgow area alone, over one million needles are handed out each year under the scheme, with a return rate of around 80%, which suggests a huge level of HGH and steroid use.

HUMAN growth hormone is a naturally-occuring substance produced by the pituitary gland which stimulates the growth of bones, muscles and tissue and was originally used in the 1960s to treat children suffering from dwarfism. These days it is manufactured synthetically for use with patients who suffer from a growth hormone deficiency. Although a banned substance for all forms of competitive sport, there is currently no reliable test for its presence, so no effective deterrent to its use. Although its possession and use is illegal in many countries, in the UK it is only illegal to possess with the intent to supply; otherwise the only bar to obtaining it is the need for a prescription. And that's not much of an obstacle, as its ready availability in gyms throughout the country will testify.

Last year, the worldwide HGH industry was worth over £1bn, a fast-expanding market that has been swollen by the growing use of the drug as an anti-ageing panacea. When Sylvester Stallone was arrested going through Australian customs with 48 vials of HGH last week, the 63-year-old Rocky star was less concerned with sculpting his famously ribbed body than holding back the ravages of time. In New York and Hollywood the use of HGH, which is promoted as preventing wrinkles, is rife. No wonder it is known as the "Peter Pan" drug.

As the drug has grown in popularity, prices have plummeted. In 2000 a single vial of HGH cost £30 - today it costs £5. Users, who are usually those in strength events, such as sprinting or bodybuilding, inject it subcutaneously or directly into the specific muscle they want to develop, or into any damaged tissue that they want to heal urgently. This would usually take several vials a day.

It is now in use at all levels. Imagine, for instance, that you are a top football club which has a player who has damaged a muscle and may miss a cup final, league run-in or Champions League campaign. Your medical team know that HGH allows your player to be fit to play in a third of the time of conventional medicine - what do you do? As the steroid scandal at Juventus in 2001 shows, at many clubs that question would be a rhetorical one.

Using HGH isn't without risk though. Side-effects include abnormal growth in extremities such as feet, hands and jaws, which is why Ben Johnson's former coach, Charlie Francis, asked why, at the Tokyo World Championships in 1991, seven of the eleven athletes from Carl Lewis' elite sprint club, the Santa Monica Track Club, wore teeth braces, compared to around 0.3% of the adult population.

More debilitating side-effects include arthritis, diabetes, hypoglycemia and the growth of internal organs, which can place fatal pressure on the heart. It is widely believed that it was HGH which led to the premature death at 38 of Olympic double gold medallist Florence Joyner-Griffith (pictured below). "People with an excess of HGH in their blood," warned the dopers' guide The Steroid Bible, "rarely live past 60."

Those, however, aren't the only dangers. In its early days, HGH was harvested from cadavers, a practice stopped when cases of CJD amongst users began to be detected. While most HGH is now synthetic stock from Europe, the black market is not choosy about the source of hormones and one contaminated batch stolen from quarantine at Great Ormond Street is still in circulation.

"They keep finding samples of HGH which are still made from human corpse material," said German biologist Professor Werner Franke, a specialist on doping. "It's still made the old way and it's cheaper than ever. It is coming out of Russia and other such countries (particularly China)."

In Britain the one brake on the trade has been the police, who have prosecuted dealers selling HGH or steroids without the necessary prescription. Seizures of steroids (a generic category which includes HGH) in Scotland have risen tenfold in the period 2000-2006, on a par with Wales but a fraction of the steroid seizures in England, where the Home Office reported a 254% rise in the quantity of anabolic steroids seized in 2004. The number of steroid supply offences in England rose from 20 in 1996 to 640 in 2002, higher than LSD and methadone offences. All this suggests that steroids and growth hormones are easily available to those who want to use them.

THE ATHENS Games in 2004 recorded 26 doping cases, the highest number at any Olympics since testing began but still less than 1% of the 3667 tests collected. Anti-doping authorities such as WADA routinely suggest that over the past 30 years the number of positives has remained static at around 1-2%, even at major events, such as the Olympics, where the pressure to win is immense. However, that figure is at odds with the evidence of two in-depth studies conducted in Australia and Canada, which concluded that between 50-70% of athletes were using performance-enhancing drugs. And it is certainly at odds with the information gleaned from the UK's needle-exchange programme.

A survey of gym users in the UK in 1993 indicated that at least 5% of regular gym users were currently using anabolic steroids. No reliable current data exists, but with steroids more easily accessible and cheaper 14 years later, the number of gym users on HGH or steroids is likely to be higher, especially as, for any who take part in competitive sport, testing has become more sophisticated for steroids and there remains no test for HGH or insulin. There is, though, now a test for the previous drug of choice for endurance athletes, erythropoietin (EPO).

It doesn't, of course, help that the UK is the only major country in the world not to have an independent anti-doping agency for sport or to have implemented routine blood testing, despite the fact that the Government made extra funds available in 2003 and athletes like Paula Radcliffe and Hayley Tulloch are requesting it.

That leaves the UK reliant on organisations such as WADA and the IOC. Yet despite IOC president Jacques Rogge's statement that "doping is the greatest threat to sport", the IOC's determination to fight HGH has been in question since it cut off funding on the GH2000 research project in 2000 when endocrinologist Professor Peter Sonksen at London's St Thomas's Hospital was close to developing a verifiable test for HGH.

So it is now down to law enforcement agencies around the world to combat HGH. There have been seizures on the Tour de France, the high-profile BALCO case, and in 1998 Chinese swimmer Yuan Yuan was deported when she was caught carrying industrial quantities of HGH into Australia ahead of the world championships.

Closer to home, however, the problem continues to fester. "HGH gets little publicity, but its use is continuing to grow," said Scottish drugs specialist Dr Rob Dawson, who now runs a Drugs in Sport clinic at Chester-le-Street, near Newcastle. "Not only does it make for an unequal playing field in sport, but unless we do something it's only a matter of time before we will begin to see deaths among Scottish gym users as a result."

And when we do, we won't be able to say we weren't warned.