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**Jangle** · August 16, 2013, 10:15 AM

Alex Rodriguez's dirty secret! Yankees slugger sought performance help in hush-hush meet with reformed BALCO kingpin Victor Conte

Conte described how Rodriguez showed up uninvited on his doorstep in May 2012 with admitted BALCO steroid casualty Bill Romanowski, the former NFL linebacker, to discuss legal products that could give Rodriguez an edge.

Comments (125) By Teri Thompson AND Michael O'keeffe / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Published: Saturday, August 10, 2013, 10:00 PM

Updated: Sunday, August 11, 2013, 11:06 AM

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Corey Sipkin/New York Daily News

Alex Rodriguez is fighting 211-game suspension for ties to performance-enhancing drugs.

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SAN FRANCISCO — Last spring, a year before Anthony Bosch catapulted into the center of Major League Baseball’s latest doping scandal, Alex Rodriguez secretly sought out the advice of the man at the heart of its first major steroid crisis: Victor Conte.
Now, the BALCO founder — who served four months in prison for masterminding a huge steroid conspiracy that enveloped Barry Bonds, Jason Giambi and Olympic track star Marion Jones, among others — met last week with two investigators from Major League Baseball’s Department of Investigations.

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Conte said he spent more than two hours with the officials — Dan Mullin and Eduardo Dominguez Jr. — on Wednesday at his lawyer’s office in San Francisco.
He described how Rodriguez showed up uninvited on his doorstep in May 2012 with admitted BALCO steroid casualty Bill Romanowski, the former NFL linebacker, to discuss legal products that could give Rodriguez an edge.
Conte said Rodriguez had been trying to set up a sitdown through Romanowski for two months before they finally met, the day before the Yankees kicked off a three-game series with the Oakland A’s.
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Susana Bates for New York Daily News

Victor Conte says Alex Rodriguez never asked him about illicit drugs during their 45-minute meeting in May of 2012, but adds that the Yankees third baseman made it clear that their interactions must be kept confidential.

Romanowski had tried to convince Conte to fly to New York or Los Angeles to meet with Rodriguez, but Conte said he declined the offer.
“I flushed it out with Romo before they ever showed up at the office,” Conte said. “I clearly told Romo it (anything he could do for Rodriguez) was about legal performance enhancement.”
According to Conte, Romanowski called him at the offices of Scientific Nutrition for Advance Conditioning (SNAC), the sports supplement company he operates with his daughter Veronica Conte in San Carlos, Calif.,to tell him he was with Rodriguez and they would arrive at the office “in about five minutes.”
Most of Conte’s staff was getting ready to go home for the evening when Romanowski parked his dark blue Cadillac Escalade in the SNAC parking lot with Rodriguez in his passenger seat.
Rodriguez waited in the vehicle and sent the former NFL star into SNAC’s offices to make sure nobody was around to see who was about to come in.
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Corey Sipkin/New York Daily News

Alex Rodriguez was looking for products that would give him a legal edge, says Victor Conte.

“He was real secretive,” Veronica Conte said of the Yankee third baseman. “He wanted to make sure no one was here.”
Conte said he met with Rodriguez and Romanowski for about 45 minutes. Conte said he believes Rodriguez was looking for products that would give him a legal edge, but that the Yankee didn’t want their transactions to become public knowledge.
“If the media knew I was talking to you, that would be bad,” Veronica Conte remembered Rodriguez saying. “We both have these histories. He was basically saying, ‘I can't have any trace of Victor Conte.’ ”
Conte agreed to consult with Rodriguez under the condition that he provide Conte with a blood test, a requirement for any athlete Conte works with “so that I know nothing funny is going on.”
He said he gave basic advice to Rodriguez and then Bosch by telephone after he reviewed the blood test; he told the embattled superstar and “his nutrition guy,” for example, to stop using a calcium-magnesium-zinc product because calcium blocks the absorption of zinc.
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PAUL SAKUMA/AP

Victor Conte, who served four months in prison for masterminding a huge steroid conspiracy, says A-Rod showed up on his doorstep uninvited in May 2012.

He also urged him to use a type of protein that promotes overnight healing of the little muscle tears that are the result of working out.
SNAC, meanwhile, shipped supplements to Rodriguez in June and July of 2012.

Veronica Conte said SNAC stopped hearing from Rodriguez not long after the last supplement shipment. “By then, the stuff about Biogenesis was starting to come out,” she said.
* * *
For years now, Conte has been shining a bright light on some of the dark corners of the sports world. The BALCO founder is now an outspoken clean sports advocate, aggressively calling out leagues and agencies for not doing enough to fight doping.
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ELAINE THOMPSON/AP

Admitted BALCO steroid casualty Bill Romanowski tries to convince Victor Conte to help A-Rod.

“I was eager to meet with (MLB) because I wanted to answer their questions (about Rodriguez),” Conte said during an interview with the Daily News in the SNAC offices. “I also wanted to give my input and have them take it back to (commissioner) Bud Selig. I wanted to share my ideas about improving Major League Baseball’s drug program. I’ve been waiting for this opportunity for a long time.”
Conte told The News that the primary focus of his meeting with Rodriguez was about legal products that could give the Yankee slugger a competitive edge. They talked hypothetically about the banned substances athletes use and how they use them.
But Conte said Rodriguez did not ask him for illicit drugs.
MLB officials made it clear to Conte’s lawyer, Ed Swanson, that Conte was not a target of an investigation or suspected him of any wrongdoing.
In the past two weeks, MLB has suspended 14 players, including Rodriguez, who were involved with Bosch and Biogenesis. Rodriguez was suspended for 211 games, but has been allowed to play pending his appeal.
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Susana Bates/New York Daily News

Victor Conte's daugther, Veronica, delivers a package of supplements to Alex Rodriguez's hotel suite on May 25, 2012.

Conte said investigators seemed to be aware of two shipments of legal over-the-counter supplements he shipped to Rodriguez at addresses in Miami Beach and Greenwich Village.
Veronica Conte, 29, also said she delivered a package of supplements to A-Rod's suite at a San Francisco's hotel on May 25, 2012, when the Yankees were playing a series against the Oakland A's.
Rodriguez denied earlier this year that he had been a patient of Bosch’s, who was sanctioned by the Florida Department of Health earlier this year for practicing medicine without a license.
“He was never treated by him and he was never advised by him,” a Rodriguez spokesman said in January after the Miami New Times published documents from Biogenesis that detailed drug arrays and money paid to Bosch, including from Rodriguez.
But Conte said his telephone exchanges with Rodriguez and Bosch gave him the impression that the self-styled “biochemist” was deeply involved in what Bosch called “A-Rod’s program.” Conte said Rodriguez referred to Bosch as “his nutrition guy.”
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Paul Sancya/AP

Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig is leading the charge in the steroid fight.

According to Conte, he spoke on the telephone twice to Bosch last summer about Rodriguez’s nutrition regimen.
(Investigators may have been attempting to verify information that Bosch — who agreed to cooperate with MLB after baseball lawyers sued him in Florida state court for interfering with the sport’s drug policy — provided them.)
“They said they were here because they wanted me to help them with anything to do with A-Rod and and MLB. They came to me for help and I did the best I could,” Conte said of investigators Dominguez and Mullin. “I told them that players are using old-school testosterone, troches and creams and I believe it’s more widespread than they know.”
* * *
The News first reported in August 2012 that Melky Cabrera had created a fictitious website for a supplement he claimed had caused him to test positive for elevated levels of synthetic testosterone.
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Ben Margot/AP

Victor Conte says he made it clear to A-Rod that he could only help with 'legal performance enhancement.'

Cabrera, who was suspended for 50 games, was assisted by Juan Carlos Nunez, a Bosch associate who worked with Cabrera’s agents, Sam and Seth Levinson.
According to sources, MLB is now aggressively investigating the role agents may have played in steering players to Biogenesis.
Conte said he told Dominguez and Mullin that he wasn’t sure he could provide them with anything that could help them when MLB brings its case against Rodriguez to arbitrator Fredric Horowitz later this year but that he could help them in other ways.
He used Wednesday’s meeting to advocate for the more effective carbon-isotope drug test over the current testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio test baseball currently relies on. He also said he answered questions about how athletes continue to circumvent baseball’s collectively bargained drug program.
He said he described to Mullin and Dominguez how players use old-school testosterone, delivered in fast-acting troches — small lozenges — and creams, not the designer steroids Conte gave athletes in the BALCO days. They use human growth hormone and a thyroid medicine, liothyronime, which speeds up the metabolic rate and is not on sports' banned drug lists.
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Susana Bates/for New York Daily News

Veronica Conte, daughter of Victor Conte, says A-Rod was 'real secretive' about the 2012 meeting.

“You don’t even need a therapeutic use exemption for it,” Conte said, adding that he believes it enhances performance.
He said he told them how players pop the lozenges in their mouths right after a game (players are usually tested before games) and about testosterone pellets the size of a grain of rice that players insert under the skin over their gluteal muscles.
“Troches look identical to a Lifesaver,” Conte said. “They have 75 milligrams of testosterone. They taste like candy. I think the use of these products is much more extensive than they knew.”
Rodriguez has spent the years since he acknowledged in 2009 that he had used steroids during his tenure with the Texas Rangers fending off PED allegations.
He was linked to Anthony Galea, the Toronto sports physician and human growth hormone guru who pleaded guilty in 2011 to bringing unapproved drugs, including HGH and Actovegin, into the U.S. for the purpose of treating professional athletes.
Rodriguez also worked with steroid-stained trainer Angel Presinal, who was banned from MLB clubhouses in 2001 after Presinal and then-Cleveland Indians slugger Juan Gonzalez were linked to a bag of banned drugs seized by Canadian border agents.
“We talked about Galea and Mark Lindsey,” said Conte of his meeting with MLB investigators, referring to the chiropractor who has worked with Galea and several pro athletes, including Rodriguez.
Conte also worked with Lindsey during the BALCO days. “They also knew that Tony Bosch talked to me twice.”
He remains hopeful, he said, that baseball will finally listen to what he has to say.
“After they were finished asking me about A-Rod,” Conte said, “I told them, ‘I would like to give you information you could take back to your bosses.’ The guy Dominguez opened his notebook and started writing.”
With Nathaniel Vinton

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/i-...#ixzz2c8q1bADX

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