Playing hard

According to this New York Daily News article, Viagra is the latest performance-enhancing craze. That’s right, the world famous boner pill is thought to improve athletic (and its intended purpose, sexual) performance. Taking Viagra is believed to increase endurance in a couple ways; it gets oxygen throughout the body, and cancels out the negative effects steroids can have on the ability to achieve erections. It is not scientific fact that Viagra helps in the performance enhancing aspect (on the field), but studies are being performed. And as expected, Roger Clemens is named as a Viagra user. More good press for Roger.

BALCO’s Victor Conte says all of his athletes took over the counter versions of the drug. I’m guessing none of them slide head first…

C.R.E.A.M. (see Wu-Tang)

Congratulations to BALCO founder Victor Conte. His probation ended today, March 30, 2008, and he is now promoting his latest scheme, a book entitled, BALCO: The Straight Dope on Barry Bonds, Marion Jones and What We Can Do To Save Sports. The title is a mouthful and definitely needs some work, but he plans on ratting out everyone he was involved with at BALCO. Conte says he will drop some bombshells about the athletes he was involved with, as well as federal agents who worked on the investigation into the company, including one who Conte says fabricated a fake confession. We have been bombarded lately with these cash-strapped “authors” coming out with cliche tell-all books about ugly scandals, and Conte is jumping on this bandwagon. After all, legal fees do add up.

Conte on his literary motives: (ESPN.com)

“It was not long ago when Bug Selig was claiming that baseball didn’t have a drug problem,” Conte said, according to the newspaper. “The world certainly knows now that there has been a rampant use of drugs in sport for decades. The anti-doping programs in place are still inept and this contributes to the use or lose mentality of many athletes. I will continue bring attention to the many loopholes that exist in the testing programs. Hopefully, one day athletes will be able to be clean and play on a level playing field at the same time. I see that I have the potential to make change — I can do that.”