Gary Hall Jr., Olympic swimmer and outspoken anti-steroid crusader for the sport of swimming, has retired from competition. Hall has been quick to point fingers at his fellow competitors for suspected steroid use and has not hesitated to share his suspicions with the media.

Gary Hall has repeatedly gone on record stating the use of steroids is widespread in swimming.

“Do I think it (doping) is getting worse? Yes, I do. It’s here, it’s in the United States. I train with an international group of swimmers and all of them have stories and a few of them have had offers and I’m not at liberty to say (any more). 

Gary Hall believes that anti-doping agencies are woefully ineffective.

“To think that it doesn’t exist is foolish,” Hall said. “All doping scandals are not a direct result of positive tests. They’re usually somebody getting caught by some other means. I don’t think that we can rely on a doping agency to really catch the people that are so far ahead of where the testing is.”

Gary Hall suggests that the massive number of world records in swimming during 2008 were most likely the results of steroids and not necessarily the revolutionary swimsuit technology used by so many elite swimmers.

“Clearly we know now it wasn’t the suit that was causing all these world records to be broken, it was copious amounts of steroids,” Hall told the assembled reporters. “Can the suit technology distract from another issue? I think it’s pretty convenient for those that are indulging the other issue.”

But Gary Hall Jr. and his anti-steroid rhetoric have created controversy since Hall has a therapeutic use exemption for insulin as a Type 1 diabetic.

But because Hall competes in an era in which athletes are doing anything for a chemical edge, he is put in an awkward position, using one of the same drugs that is used by the very dopers he denounces.

Who is using insulin to get strong? According to Victor Conte, most of the runners affiliated with his BALCO laboratory did (several of them, most recently Antonio Pettigrew, have since admitted it). Internet forums frequented by bodybuilders are full of tips on how to make insulin part of an anabolic cocktail.

“Insulin is one of the most powerful anabolic agents known. It’s also the most dangerous and the most tricky to use,” says John Romano, senior editor at the bodybuilding magazine Muscular Development.

Furthermore, Gary Hall had endorsement contracts with Becton, Dickinson and Company; BD is a maker of syringes/needles that are popular among steroid-using bodybuilders and athletes. He also organized a swimming competition with prize money and sponsorship provided by Novo Nordisk, a maker of human growth hormone. This was particularly controversial since Novo Nordisk refused to cooperate with WADA to place markers in their product that would help catch dopers.

As natural as such deals may seem, Hall’s relationship with Big Pharm has found some critics. In 2001, he helped organize a New York swimming competition called the Novo Nordisk Sprint Cup. With big cash prizes, it was supposed to bring much-needed publicity to the sport.

But Novo Nordisk is one of the leading producers of human growth hormone, a prohibited performance-enhancer that is thought to be in wide use among athletes (an accredited test for the drug is only now being introduced).

[...]

The problem that some critics saw in Hall’s deal with Novo Nordisk was that the Danish company declined to cooperate with the IOC by building tell-tale, chemical markers into its product - a small adjustment that would not hinder the drug’s intended effects but would give drug testers something to look for in a urine sample.

Even in retirement, we expect Gary Hall Jr. to continue to appear in headlines in the future when the media needs someone to comment on doping in swimming.