A source tells the New York Daily News that Roger Clemens used to pop Viagra in order to help his on field performance.
Clemens stashed the clearly marked, diamond-shaped pills in a GNC vitamin bottle in his locker at Yankee Stadium, according to a source familiar with the clubhouse, perhaps keeping the drug undercover to avoid the inevitable wisecracks about all the girlfriends he needed to please.
Clemens wasn’t alone. The pitcher, who is believed to have scored the drug from a teammate, joined the burgeoning number of athletes who have turned Vitamin V and its over-the-counter substitutes into one of the hottest drugs in locker rooms.
The drug is so widely used for off-label purposes that it has drawn the attention of anti-doping officials and law-enforcement agencies in the United States and beyond.
“All my athletes took it,” BALCO founder Victor Conte, whose acolytes included Jason Giambi, Barry Bonds and Marion Jones, said of an over-the-counter supplement he claimed mimicked the effects of Viagra.
“It’s bigger than creatine. It’s the biggest product in nutritional supplements.”
Among the off-label uses for Viagra, which first went on the market in 1998, it:
· Helps build endurance, especially for athletes who compete at high altitudes
· Delivers oxygen, nutrients and performance-enhancing drugs to muscles more efficiently
· Counteracts the impotence that can be a side-effect of testosterone injections
Boy, when people say athletes will do anything to gain an advantage on the field, they really mean anything. Forget the endurance and oxygen benefits – I couldn’t imagine playing an entire game while sporting massive wood the whole time.
So Clemens went as far as to pop the little blue pill for an advantage on the field, but not HGH or other performance-enhancing drugs? Come on.
