by Dennis 'dSource' Guillermo

There's this proverb: "It takes a thief to catch a thief". The now defunct BALCO (Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative) founder Victor Conte likens it to Leonardo DiCaprio's character Frank Abegnale from the movie 'Catch Me If You Can'. So I figured, 'who better to ask about steroids, PEDs, HGHs and doping in sports other than a man who has extensive first-hand experience on the topic, and knows the science of supplements, performance enhancers, doping... the whole nine yards?!'

Conte and his BALCO labs were vilified and became the poster child of baseball's doping era, after the much publicized government investigation centered on home run king Barry Bonds in 2003.

Conte served time in prison for his involvement in the case, but has since cleaned up his act and devoted his time and expertise in his company called SNAC  (Scientific Nutrition for Advanced Conditioning) which provides advanced legal supplements to help elite athletes get the best out of their bodies through scientific nutrition and advanced methods from years and year of his extensive research. And as part of Conte's plight in his 'road to redemption', he intends to help clean up sports by volunteering his knowledge of the system to aid in catching cheaters and dopers in sports.

Whether you admire the guy and think he's a genius, or despise him for his checkered past and think nothing more of him than this era's Dr. Frankenstein, you can't deny that the man has helped revolutionize sports. ESPN ranks him as the #1 sports scientist. In other words, he knows doping.

According to Conte, none of the current blood testing is “fool proof” and that a more stringent drug testing program is needed to truly clean up sports such as boxing. Conte revealed to me today in an interview, that he is part of an anti-doping task force he calls VADA (Voluntary Anti-Doping Agency) that will soon be launched to provide athletes the most comprehensive drug testing.

Among fighters that have expressed their interest in submitting themselves to the program are IBF jr. welterweight champ Zab Judah, WBA Super World super middleweight champ Andre Ward and WBC and WBO bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire Jr.

“I'm going to tell you something that we've never disclosed to anybody before. And we've been working on this and I'll tell you some of the names, because this has been written about in some boxing magazines. Dr. Margaret Goodman (former ringside physician and Medical Advisory Board Chairman for the Nevada State Athletic Commission), Dr. Flip Hamonsky (Former Nevada commissioner), I'm involved, and there's another very high profile anti-doping world renowned expert involved. We'll reveal who this is shortly, but he is one of the most credible people in the world of anti-doping,” Conte told me.

The program is structured so that athletes can voluntarily submit themselves to Olympic-style random drug testing which will be paid for by sponsors to alleviate worries about cost for fighters willing to step forward to show their desire to clean up the sport of boxing.

“It's called VADA (Voluntary Anti-Doping Agency). You're probably reading between the lines here on what have I been talking to Zab (Judah) about, what have I been talking to Nonito (Donaire) about, what have I been talking to Virgil Hunter about (Andre Ward's trainer)," Conte further explained to me. "We've been working on this since September of last year and we hope to implement it in the near future. How soon that can be, whether it's going to be in days, weeks or months, I can't tell you. But it's going to be in the near future.”

(Audio and video of this interview is available by clicking this link)

Dennis 'dSource' Guillermo is a prolific boxing writer. For more on anti-doping and an archive of his work click here. You can reach him at DennisGuillermo2@yahoo.com and on Twitter @itsDSOURCEbaby.