AMERICA AT LARGE:The client list of Dr Tony Galea, accused of performance-enhancing drug transportation, has some interesting names, writes GEORGE KIMBALL
THAT INFERIORITY complex our neighbours to the north sometimes seem to harbour about the United States isn’t always misplaced. The typical middle-American might go weeks at a time without Canada once intruding into his thoughts, so if Canadians have evinced a certain smug satisfaction over events of the past few weeks, they were probably entitled.
Survey figures indicate that for the fortnight that began with kd lang’s stirring rendition of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah at the Opening Ceremony and concluded with Sidney Crosby’s overtime goal that gave the home team the gold medal in last Sunday’s ice-hockey championship, Americans were pretty much glued to their television sets as they monitored the Vancouver Games.
Not only did Canada have, for a change, the undivided attention of most of the US, but they got to hand us our comeuppance while we were watching.
Developments over the past couple of days suggest our attention may shortly be focused on another aspect of cross-border relations, and this time it may be attention the Canadians would rather live without.
Less then 24 hours after the Olympic flame had been extinguished in Vancouver, at the Florida spring training camp of the defending champions New York Yankees, Alex Rodriguez confirmed to reporters he had been contacted by federal agents interested in the activities of Dr Tony Galea, a Toronto physician under investigation in both countries for his role in the international transportation of performance-enhancing drugs.
Although A-Rod said he would “fully cooperate” with the probe, that may be less than assuring to the feds. Until 13 months ago the baseball star steadfastly maintained he had “never, ever” used PEDs himself, but he was forced to recant that denial in the face of evidence to the contrary.
A month after owning up to his prior steroid use, A-Rod flew to Vail, Colorado, where he underwent arthroscopic hip surgery performed by “Doctor Hip” himself – Dr Marc Philippon, the Canadian-born surgeon to the stars who came to prominence a decade ago when Greg Norman, Steve Elkington and Jesper Parnevik all credited him with having preserved their careers with the revolutionary and non-invasive procedure he had developed.
Rodriguez’ hip procedure, which caused him to miss the first 66 games of the 2009 season, took place exactly a year ago, and seemed at the time to be entirely unrelated to the more sordid matters then cluttering up his life.
What has now attracted the interest of both the FBI and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police is Philippon’s recommendation that Dr Mark Lindsay supervise A-Rod’s rehabilitative process.
Lindsay is a Toronto chiropractor whose name has come up before. He had previously, in conjunction with Victor Conte’s infamous Balco lab, numbered among his clients sprinters Marion Jones and her then-consort Tim Montgomery and NFL player Bill Romanowski. (Ms Jones, you may recall, did six months in the pokey for perjuring herself before the Balco grand jury about her involvement with steroids. Romanowski was a more cooperative witness. Montgomery was convicted on unrelated heroin distribution charges and is currently a resident of a federal penitentiary in Alabama.)
Lindsay is also a principal in a Toronto sports-medicine clinic called Affinity Health – as is Dr Galea.
Last September, when US border patrol agents in Buffalo, New York, inspected a Canadian-registered Nissan driven by Ms Mary Ann Catalano, they discovered 111 syringes, 20 vials and 76 ampoules of drugs, including Human Growth Hormone and Actovegin (legal in Canada but not in the US). Ms Catalano, it developed, was Dr Galea’s “executive assistant”.
Caught red-handed, she cooperated with the authorities, admitting she was transporting the contraband at Galea’s request because, he told her, he had been “flagged” – and had she succeeded in her role as Galea’s mule, she was to rendezvous with him in the US to hand over the drugs.
In fairly short order the Mounties raided Galea’s Toronto offices and placed him under arrest.
It subsequently developed that A-Rod wasn’t the only high-profile athlete on Galea’s client list. Last year the good doctor apparently flew to Florida on a number of occasions to meet Tiger Woods, who he was helping recover from knee surgery.
Lindsay, his colleague at Affinity Health, also treated Woods. (These revelations might have made a bigger splash had they not come to light in December, but which time Tiger had other fish to fry.)
The world of medicine may be small, but it isn’t that small. With three-quarters of a million doctors in the United States, you’ve got to wonder why Tiger – or A-Rod – would import a Canadian doctor who isn’t even licensed to practice medicine in the US, and what, exactly, Lindsay had to recommend him over 60,000 American chiropractors.
And at this point, you’ve even got to wonder why Philippon would stick his own neck out by steering his surgical patients to these guys.
Full disclosure here: 10 years ago, when Dr Philippon was still operating out of Fort Lauderdale, he also repaired my hip. (On the same weekend, he did Parnevik’s and Olympic skater Tara Lipinski’s.)
But wait, it gets even better. A 2004 Toronto Sun dispatch about the Canadian Football League Argonauts having retained his services began: “Toronto chiropractor Mark Lindsay, who is on call to US President George Bush . . .”
