Remembering a Shameful Period in U.S. Track & Field
Untold: Hall of Shame (2022)
A Quick TV Review
"The clear"..."the cream"...those words entered sports fans' lexicon in 2003 when news broke of arrests at the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO), which had served as a distributor of performance-enhancing drugs and masking agents to a series of high profile athletes.
A Quick TV Review
"The clear"..."the cream"...those words entered sports fans' lexicon in 2003 when news broke of arrests at the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO), which had served as a distributor of performance-enhancing drugs and masking agents to a series of high profile athletes.
Hall of Shame, one of Netflix's most recent additions to the Untold sports documentary series, brings us back to that moment in September 2003 when BALCO's empire crumbled and the training secrets of multiple athletes - including Olympians Tim Montgomery and Marion Jones - began to be revealed.
While Jones doesn't participate in the production, Montgomery certainly does. The two-time Olympian (Atlanta 1996, Sydney 2000) is front and center, candid about his drive to "know what it feels like to be the greatest at any cost possible". His 'Project World Record' drove him to BALCO's founder Victor Conte, whose work with supplements earned him a sort-of Svengali reputation.
For his part, Conte claims his own ambitions in illicit formulas and treatments - in which the non-medically trained entrepreneur acted as pharmaceutical expert - kickstarted when he witnessed the explosion of power would-be Olympic track sprint champion Ben Johnson showed at Seoul 1988.
That Johnson was caught was no matter. Conte just needed to figure out the right 'clear' and 'cream' to better mask the drugs he saw as rampant in Olympic sports. By 2000, he was in that business and receiving interest from a variety of stars, from professional baseball to track & field. Enter Montgomery and Jones. And what would eventually be an enduring and shameful moment in Team USA Olympic sports when Jones, a would-be five-time Sydney 2000 medalist, saw her BALCO-fueled house of cards finally crumble.
What to make of Conte? Today, after serving time on only two of the 42 counts originally charged against him, he's contrite about BALCO's past and forthright about his subsequent work helping uncover drug use. But is that a smirk seen along with his self-professed 180-degree turn? Montgomery might have said it best: "that's something you can never take away from a hustler. the hustle".
While Jones doesn't participate in the production, Montgomery certainly does. The two-time Olympian (Atlanta 1996, Sydney 2000) is front and center, candid about his drive to "know what it feels like to be the greatest at any cost possible". His 'Project World Record' drove him to BALCO's founder Victor Conte, whose work with supplements earned him a sort-of Svengali reputation.
For his part, Conte claims his own ambitions in illicit formulas and treatments - in which the non-medically trained entrepreneur acted as pharmaceutical expert - kickstarted when he witnessed the explosion of power would-be Olympic track sprint champion Ben Johnson showed at Seoul 1988.
That Johnson was caught was no matter. Conte just needed to figure out the right 'clear' and 'cream' to better mask the drugs he saw as rampant in Olympic sports. By 2000, he was in that business and receiving interest from a variety of stars, from professional baseball to track & field. Enter Montgomery and Jones. And what would eventually be an enduring and shameful moment in Team USA Olympic sports when Jones, a would-be five-time Sydney 2000 medalist, saw her BALCO-fueled house of cards finally crumble.
What to make of Conte? Today, after serving time on only two of the 42 counts originally charged against him, he's contrite about BALCO's past and forthright about his subsequent work helping uncover drug use. But is that a smirk seen along with his self-professed 180-degree turn? Montgomery might have said it best: "that's something you can never take away from a hustler. the hustle".
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