A new episode in the untold series, Hall of Shame, drops on Netflix Tuesday, August 15th. This documentary is about the biggest doping scandal ever to rock the sports community. Victor Conte is a former musician who became embroiled in the BALCO saga and ended up going to a minimum-security prison for four months. Born in Fresno, California, in 1950, Conte joined a series of bands as a teenager and ended up playing bass for the Bay Area group Tower of Power in the late 1970s. In 1984, he founded the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operate (BALCO), which was dedicated to sports nutrition but was later prosecuted for developing designer steroids. In 2004, Conte was taken into custody for conspiracy to distribute steroids in a scandal that involved superstars like Marion Jones, Tim Montgomery, Barry Bonds, and Bill Romanowski. Conte ended up spending four months in a minimum-security prison camp. He did not co-operate against any athletes and accepted full consequences for his actions.

 

In 1987, he founded another company – Scientific Nutrition for Advanced Conditioning (SNAC), which involves futuristic athletic training methods and the production of nutritional supplements. The SNAC flagship product ZMA is a nighttime sleep and recovery formula. Conte has become an outspoken anti-doping advocate and has worked with world class boxers since 2009. The SNAC Team includes many world champions including Devin Haney (who appears in the film), Terence Crawford, Demetrius Andrade and many others.

 

Hall of Shame concerns the rise and fall and rise again of Victor Conte, with the official synopsis as follows: “For 16 years, Conte claimed BALCO Laboratories, his supplement and nutrition company based in the Bay Area, never dabbled in illegal performance-enhancing drugs. But by 2000, he went to the dark side and became the go-to guy for athletes in search of steroids, fame, and world records.”