In the wake of the release of Al Jazeera’s investigative documentary The Dark Side, which alleges PED use amongst star athletes across professional sports, two of the film’s subjects have filed defamation lawsuits against the news network.
The Phillies’ Ryan Howard and Nationals’ Ryan Zimmerman both filed lawsuits Tuesday afternoon in an effort to shoot down allegations that they were involved in a doping ring which include a Florida-based nutrition company called Elementz Nutrition.
Company founder Charlie Sly was recorded unknowingly by an undercover reporter and mentioned MLB’s Howard and Zimmerman, along with the NFL’s Peyton Manning, James Harrison, Mike Neal and Julius Peppers as players that he provided PED’s with. Shortly after the documentary was released in December, Sly backtracked by saying “to be clear, I am recanting any such statements and there is no truth to any statement of mine.”
On the surface, the athletes named might seem to be random and not make much sense, lending the possibility that Sly was in fact “trying to pull a fast one,” as he later put it, on the undercover reporter. But according to the New York Times, nearly all of athletes mentioned are clients of fitness trainer Jason Riley, who just so happens to be Sly’s business partner and co-founder of Elementz Nutrition.
The Times report notes that Riley earned a reputation as “baseball’s MVP of the post-steroid era.” His most famous MLB client was Derek Jeter, who started to work out with Riley after the 2007 season. According to the Times story:
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.
Ian O’Connor wrote that ESPN piece, and mentioned in the same article about Jeter and Riley that “the results were staggering. Suddenly Derek Jeter had replaced Dick Clark as America’s oldest teenager.”
Jeter was not mentioned by Sly, and his association with Riley doesn’t mean he’s guilty of anything. In his illustrious career, Jeter managed to steer-clear from drama and controversy, so hopefully this ends up being another non-story. However, it’s worth paying some attention to as MLB and professional sports as a whole try to cope with another rising PED scandal.
