Victor Conte, born in Fresno, California in 1950, is a former bassist for the funk band Tower of Power and the creator and chief of Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO). BALCO was at the center of a major doping scandal in the early 2000s. Conte started off playing bass guitar in high school and went on to play with Tower of Power from 1974 to 1980. In that same year, 1980, he created BALCO, which mainly provided nutritional supplements to athletes. In the early 2000s, BALCO started giving athletes performance-enhancing drugs, including the designer steroid THG, which was undetectable by drug testing at that point. This steroid was used by a number of well-known athletes, including Barry Bonds, Marion Jones, and Tim Montgomery, so that they could achieve outstanding results. In 2003, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) started investigating BALCO, and Conte was eventually arrested and charged with distributing steroids and money laundering. He pleaded guilty to the charges in 2005 and was given four months in prison and four months of house arrest. After his release from prison, Conte continued to work in the sports nutrition sector, founding Scientific Nutrition for Advanced Conditioning (SNAC Nutrition) in 2009. SNAC Nutrition offers a wide selection of nutritional supplements for athletes, however, it does not sell any performance-enhancing drugs. Conte is a controversial figure, however, he is a vocal advocate for the use of nutritional supplements by athletes. He has written various books on the subject, such as “BALCO: The Straight Dope on Steroids, Barry Bonds, Marion Jones, and What We Can Do to Save Sports”. In recent years, Conte has become active in the cannabis industry. He is the co-founder of Athletes for Care, a non-profit organization that promotes the use of medical cannabis by athletes. As well, he is the CEO of Real Scientific Solutions, a business that manufactures and distributes CBD products for athletes. Conte is a complex and controversial figure, yet there is no denying that he has had a remarkable impact on the world of sports. He is a pioneer in the use of performance-enhancing drugs, and his story serves as a warning about the dangers of doping in sports.
