For years, in the world of sport, there were rumors that some of our
nation’s greatest athletes were using steroids, human growth hormone, and other drugs to run faster,
jump higher, and hit harder. But as track stars like Marion Jones blazed their way to Olympic medals
and sluggers such as Mark McGwire brought fans back to baseball with stratospheric home runs,
sports officials, the media, and fans looked past the rumors and cheered on the stars to ever-higher
levels of performance. Then, in December 2004, after more than fifteen months of relentless
reporting, San Francisco Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams broke the
story of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, a tiny nutritional supplement company that
according to sworn testimony was supplying elite athletes, including baseball MVP Jason Giambi,
with banned drugs. The stories, exposing rampant cheating at the highest levels of athletics, shocked
the nation as sports heroes were brought low and their records were tainted. The exposés led to
Congressional hearings on baseball’s drug problems, and a revived effort to purge the U.S.
Olympic movement of drug cheats.
Fainaru-Wada and Williams told the complete story of BALCO and the investigation that has shaken
the foundations of the sporting world. They reveal how an obscure, self-proclaimed nutritionist,
Victor Conte, became a steroid svengali to multi-millionaire athletes desperate for a competitive
edge, and how he created superstars with his potent cocktails of miracle drugs. They expose the
international web of coaches and trainers who funneled athletes to BALCO, and how the drug
cheats stayed a step ahead of the testing agencies and the law. They detail how an aggressive IRS
investigator doggedly gathered evidence until Conte and his co-conspirators were brought to justice.
And at the center of the story is the biggest star of them all, the muscle-bound MVP outfielder of the
San Francisco Giants, Barry Bonds, whose suspicious late-career renaissance has him threatening
Hank Aaron’s all-time home run record. Barry Bonds should be banned for life from Major League Baseball.
