For Tim’s Christmas gift I bought him a gym membership and 10 sessions with a trainer. I’ll remind you that he’s recovering from a back injury received when a team mate acted the little goat with a tackle bag. Tim hit the ground and cracked a disc. He was hospitalised for a week and will only return to rugby next month. He had his first session on Wednesday and the second today. Second time in a gym and he’s already around performance enhancing drugs. The world I fight against, have been smeared for fighting against (final paragraphs) and do not want him to have to suffer - and I put it in front of his 14 year old face.
We’d both worked out, Tim with his trainer, me on my lonesome, and as I changed my greatest fear was laid bare. I knew this one trainer was using all sorts, he does bodybuilding or weightlifting, as all the tells were there on his face, body and eyes. I saw inside his locker - across from mine - and I previously thought, well it’s a free world. Today he entered and exited the showers after me. So as I was finishing getting changed he’d dried off and was standing in his shorts by his locker. Tim, playing on his phone, had moved on the bench and was facing his direction. The walking organ failure took out a prepared syringe and delivered 2 injections a few seconds apart into his doping distended stomach. No shame. No fear. No respect. How do I explain to my son that this is wrong?
Tim has read articles of mine about doping. He’s seen me on tv, heard me on radio and been at an event where I gave a lecture on the proliferation and danger of doping. In Russia, it’s pervasive. In Ireland, it’s in every gym. In Germany, in 1999, I was offered tablets to make me '“fly” from a perfectly toned 40 year old. He died of a massive heart attack in 2000 - his heart was double the size of a healthy one and I realised he’d used more than caffeine-amphetamine pills. Russia, especially Moscow, is full of people using chemicals to enhance themselves and it’s addictive. A former colleague has had 2 breast enlargements, chin and nose jobs, eyes tightened, plus her lips plumped and face botoxed regularly. This time of year it’s hard to know if it’s weather or injections that has a woman’s face frozen in place. Given that, is doping such a huge leap?
You can work out hard, push yourself and look in the mirror thinking - Jesus, I’m still a fat lump/skinny git. You look in the gym (not just online) and see these mountains of flesh or lithe bodies, shit, what am I doing wrong? Train harder? Eat smarter and less? You went to the gym to feel better in yourself, now you’re miserable and limited to one cucumber a day - but two glasses of water. You supplement with vitamins and protein powder. To train harder you get a pre-workout, laced with caffeine and sugars. You keep hitting a wall and not getting any better - according to what you think you see in the mirror. Those lads (or lassies) on Instagram seem to be posing most of the time, yet look at them. Perfect. What the hell do I need to do? Maybe a personal trainer???!!!
You get the trainer. Train smarter, eat this, don’t do that. You look in the mirror, shit, nothing. I’m still a lump. You level with the trainer. He/She says - look, I don’t normally do this, but….. Now what these shitheads don’t tell you is that what they will ‘supply’ you with is from some dealer buddy and they’re getting a cut. What they don’t tell you is that the shit they put in their own bodies is mid-to-lower range poison. So there you are, straight into the illegal drug business. If you’re lucky, you cop onto yourself and don’t start, or do too much. But, you’ll see results. Oh, look at that, I never noticed my muscles there. Trainer tells you to eat more, to use this protein powder, that other pre-workout. Your body is a temple. A temple of doom and your heart is about to be ripped from your chest. You are a dead man/woman walking, you’ve just not been told yet.
It’s addictive. Men and women slip into disorders and damaging behaviours. You’re at war with your body because your brain is so fucked up by what you read, see, hear and take. Gyms are petri dishes for the best and worst of society. If you go in trying to create the new you, good luck. If you go in to make some tweaks and changes, to get back in shape and know what you’re at, you’ll be ok. You’re lacking in confidence and desperate to be noticed, may God have mercy on your soul. As a gym chain owner, and former sponsor of my tennis players, told me - “You will never meet an unhealthier bunch of people outside of a hospice.” He had stories to tell and told me that despite signs saying - ‘No Drugs’ - and infographic posters on the walls, dealing was open - that was 2011. It spurred me to investigate the network and system of doping. It gave me a chance to write and speak from wading through the effluent I had to endure. And here is where I was smeared.
Given my work in sports and sports media, I hear stories and see things that would be front page, not just back page. Many are personal, many are damaging and some are just downright sad. Would I ever write about a former Russian international who was gay but not public, public? It would get me a hit story, especially with our recorded interview. But that is betrayal. Off the record is just that, damaging information, ditto. You have to be a human, decent and kind. Kindness is the most valuable currency, and one most abused. So in 2020, as lockdown inspired online drinks and WAY too much sharing, I was introduced to a Liverpool FC employee. Over a series of Zoom calls, together with a mutual friend, we yapped happily. On the 3rd call he told me of his concerns in Liverpool. Of things not done right. He shared documents on screen and lots of inside information. As I’d predicted in October 2019, Liverpool won the league and were set to defend their title. This employee and I had more private chats and I showed him an article I had prepped. He referred it to a colleague higher up okay’ed it and I published it - here. And a few months later I published follow ups, the first one here. Man United, Everton, Arsenal fans all laughed at Liverpool, throwing stones in their own glasshouses, but that is sport and tribalism.
The article was the best ever for the site, 4 years on it still is. Five of my articles before and after are still in the top-10. 2 Years later sports social media snapped after Liverpool players openly joked at a pre-Champions League press conference about not telling what they were taking. It came after dozens of pieces of evidence emerged that painted Jurgen Klopp and co in a terrible light. That Summer a former co-host of Capital Sports messaged me and asked if I’d heard the BBC hatchet job on me. I laughed and said I did. The UK taxpayer-funded media company devoted a show to ‘debunk’ one tiny part of the 2020 article. Apparently I didn’t want to appear on the show (neither did Liverpool, oddly) and they had an ‘expert’ on who actually contradicted his previous statements on doping. The emphasis was on - my nationality (Irish), where I live (Russia) and that I was parroting the “Kremlin line”. They couldn’t even tell the truth about my work or mention my work with the BBC. I was smeared and it worked, except - it didn’t, not for anyone involved in sports. And here is the crux.
I’ve fought against doping and drug abuse in sports for decades. I was criticising Russian sports for their lack of control well before it became useful to kick the country with it. I’d met 2 of the greatest doping genii - Bernd Pansold and Grigori Rodchenkov, the latter I interviewed. I’ve actually played sports to a decent level and worked within them. I’ve skin in the game and even moreso now that Tim is at an age when he will end up bumping into choices like using or not. For the BBC, taking me down because I’m Irish and based in Russia didn’t ‘debunk’ anything, nor did it take away from my work. What it did is make it easier for charlatans to point and say - “See, told you, they’re not cheating - now take this and you’ll run faster and longer", but still control the ball.” Meanwhile, 2 years ahead of the expected time I’ve now to prepare to have “that talk” (not the other one, this one about abusing drugs) with Tim.
Very interesting piece. It's absolutely frightening to look at some of the guys and girls at the gym here too. You wonder how they manage to walk, they're that bulked up. And all that lip filler gives the look of having gone twelve rounds with Katie Taylor. I cannot imagine how looking like that for a few years is better than having a long life. Boggles the mind. I prefer to do my thing, try hard (maybe not hard enough) and wake up knowing that the results do not require poisoning myself slowly. It's a terrible thing.