Dedicated to Empowering and Informing the Burlingame Community

B'gamers who have been here for twenty years or more will remember Burlingame was the center of the doping scandal that rocked many professional sports back in 2003.  After getting its start in Millbrae and then San Carlos, BALCO moved to 1520 Gilbreth Rd.– about a block from the It's It shop across the freeway.  The company principal, Victor Conte, and personal trainer/distributor Greg Anderson were fixtures around town.  They especially loved breakfast at Alana's.  Now Netflix has revived interest in the story with a just-released documentary film "Untold: Hall of Shame".

The film's good guy is Jeff Novitzky, the IRS agent who led the investigation into BALCO.  He grew up in B'game, graduated from Mills High School and played sports at Skyline.  His Wikipedia page is a fun read and he comes across as a tenacious investigator in the film.  This USA Today article describes the on-going social media fight between Novitsky and Conte.

If you watch closely, you will see images of the Gilbreth office building and the Burlingame police report that got things rolling.  All in all, it's a fun trip down a local memory lane.

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One response to “Netflix comes to B’game: BALCO”

  1. Joe

    From the Merc–a story of redemption

    Victor Conte, a pioneering San Mateo nutritionist who was at the center of one of the biggest sports drug scandals in
    history involving Barry Bonds, Marion Jones and other star athletes, and who later became a leading anti-doping advocate in the world of boxing, died Monday, his daughters announced. He was 75.

    Conte remained active in boxing, working with some of the sport’s top athletes even as he battled pancreatic cancer for the past year. He had spent much of the past two decades seeking redemption for his role in the BALCO episode that led to a 42-count indictment from an Internal Revenue Service investigation.

    “There are always going to be people who say I’m the devil, who hate me and think I’m the guy who destroyed the national pastime,” Conte told the BayArea News Group during a 2011 visit to his Burlingame supplement company. “I understand I made some bad decisions and harmed a lot of people. But I’m not going to give up living my life.”

    Conte was true to his word to the end.
    After serving a four-month prison sentence in 2005-06, Conte launched a supplement company called Scientific Nutrition forAdvanced Conditioning, or SNAC.
    SNAC provided an entrepreneurial path for Conte to rebuild his net worth and reputation. By 2011, he claimed sales of
    100,000 bottles a month of his ZMA sleep enhancer.

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