The New York Times connects the Al Jazeera PED report to Jason Riley, a fitness trainer based in Sarasota, Fla.
As I turned over the possibility that Sly had lied to the undercover reporter, I kept coming back to the names. Why these specific athletes?
With the help of my New York Times colleagues Ken Belson and Doris Burke, I scrutinized the list of names, and it soon appeared less random than at first blush. Nearly all of the athletes he named are clients of Jason Riley, a fitness trainer based in Sarasota, Fla.
Here is where the story of Charles Sly becomes more intriguing.
Sly is a business partner of Riley’s. When Sly applied for a pharmacist license in Florida, he used Riley’s home address.
Riley and Sly founded Elementz Nutrition, a nutritional supplements company whose website and Facebook page feature many athletes Sly mentioned on camera.
Why is that significant?
Riley’s work as a trainer is so celebrated that he carries a reputation as “baseball’s M.V.P. of the post-steroids era.”
His most famous client, the man whose career he was credited with reshaping and saving from mortality’s shadow, was Derek Jeter. In 2010, a few years into Riley’s makeover, The Daily News proclaimed: “Derek is turning back the clock at short.” ESPN declared Riley “dumped the Captain into a hot tub time machine” and turned him into a 25-year-old.
Significant caveats are in order here: No evidence has emerged linking Jeter to performance-enhancing drugs, and Sly did not connect him to banned substances, although he boasted of helping other athletes obtain them. And a connection to Sly, Riley or anyone else is hardly proof of any wrongdoing.
As Bill James noted, the main effect of steroids was to make you play like you were younger.
This story is developing, and:
Last week, Elementz Nutrition voluntarily dissolved and closed its doors.
from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/1PLKK4U
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