Drugs in Sport Victor Conte profile: Duncan Campbell traces the colourful career of the man at the centre of the THG investigations

When a trio of young musicians in California in the 1970s decided to give themselves the jokey name of the Pure Food and Drug Act, they can little have imagined how apposite it might one day become for one of their number.

Now Victor Conte, virtuoso bass player turned nutritionist to the sports stars of the world, finds himself at the centre of one of the biggest investigations into drugs in athletics, and the subject of a raid by the US Food and Drug Administration - an organisation that certainly does not regard its name as a joke.

While to friends and admirers Conte is a flamboyant man with a shrewd entrepreneurial brain, to his accusers he is potentially part of "intentional doping of the worst sort".

This week, San Francisco, the city where Conte once entertained with his salty riffs on the bass, is playing host to the opening of a grand jury hearing into Conte himself and the nutritional supplements he has supplied through his company.

Athletes alleged to have been clients of Conte, either unwittingly or wittingly, have included Britain's Dwain Chambers, the baseball star Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants, and the sprinters Marion Jones and Kelli White.

Conte himself was a successful runner as a young man and won a sports scholarship to Fresno State University. His interest in sport might have led to a long and initially lucrative career in the business. But in the 1970s there was still relatively little money in athletics, and Conte made his living as a musician, often helping to manage the groups with whom he played.

"He always took care of the business end of things," a fellow musician, Freddie Roulette, told the Los Angeles Times this week.

Nicknamed Walkin' Fish, supposedly because of his appearance on stage, Conte played between 1965 and 1983 with such musicians as Herbie Hancock and such groups as Tower of Power and Jump Street. He played on at least 15 albums before swapping careers.

"Victor wasn't just a three-chord rock'n'roll blues player," the musician Harvey Mandel told the LA Times. "You could play any type of song, even jazz fusion, he'd be right there with you."

Mandel also believed Conte was always destined to be more than just a backing musician. "That guy, he was too smart to do any one thing," he says. "You could see Victor being anything."

That "anything" was first the founder of a homoeopathic clinic, the Millbrae Holistic health centre, which he opened in 1980. It was his first involvement in the nutrition industry, and he used it as a stepping-stone to the organisation now at the centre of the investigation, the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative (Balco) in Burlingame, northern California - and its sister company, Scientific Nutrition for Advanced Conditioning (Snac).

Behind both companies is Conte's theory that people can be tested for mineral deficiencies and then given supplements to correct them. It is his alleged supplying of the "designer steroid" tetrahydrogestrinone (THG) that has led to the current investigation.

While attention has focused on the athletes who took his supplements, he was also supposedly providing tests for many members of the public. It is here that Conte appears to have come to the attention of the US attorney in San Francisco, whose investigation has followed a line of inquiry suggesting doctors were paid to recommend their patients for Conte's tests.Conte denies the allegations. A potential settlement in the action, which seeks around $1 million from Balco, is being explored by the two parties.

Steve Downs, the editorial director of Natural Bodybuilding and Fitness, the magazine of two federations dedicated to drug-free bodybuilding, said Conte was known in the industry as a supplier of supplements before the latest investigation.

"There are a number of people like him who have guru status," said Downs, adding there was an ever-increasing market for supplements for athletes and bodybuilders, and the industry was constantly having to examine which products might contain banned or dangerous ingredients. The Internet, said Downs, was offering supplements that promised amazing results without their contents being clear.

His own federations now used both lie detector and urine testing in competition to counter drug use, he said.

Conte was previously in the public eye after the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, when the American shot putter CJ Hunter was shown to have more than the permissible amount of the steroid nandrolone in his system. Conte acknowledged he had supplied Hunter with supplements which would have led to the test's results.

However charming Conte may have been to his clients, he certainly had enemies in the business, and one of them has brought about his current predicament. In June this year, a man describing himself as a track and field coach called the US athletics authorities and named athletes supposedly using a steroid that would not be traced by the standard tests, sent a syringe containing the supposed substance, and named Conte as the source of the drug.

Conte has said he is opposed to the use of steroids. In a 1998 interview with the athletics writer Nelson Montana, he said: "I don't condone the use of anabolic steroids or growth hormone. However, I know of a number of athletes who use growth hormone, and most of them are reporting tremendous benefits."

When the investigation began this summer, Conte e-mailed the media with his denials. "In my opinion, this is about jealous competitive coaches and athletes that all have a history of promoting and using performance-enhancing agents being completely hypocritical in their actions," he wrote.

"As many will soon find out, the world of track and field is a very dirty business, and this goes far beyond the coaches and athletes."

Last week, the US anti-doping agency's chief executive, Terry Madden, said the allegations against Balco suggested "intentional doping of the worst sort", a conspiracy of chemists, coaches and athletes using "undetectable designer steroids".

Since then, Conte has gone quiet. Calls to Balco are received on an answering machine and have not been returned. Yesterday his lawyers, Robert Holley and Troy Ellerman, issued a statement insisting the speculation about him was "totally misguided and untrue", and concluding: "Mr Conte is a scientist and businessman who has dedicated his life to helping others, including high-profile athletes."

Others have also remained tight-lipped. Don Catlin, the director of the Olympic drug-testing centre at the University of California, Los Angeles, has not returned calls on the subject. The US attorney's office in San Francisco has no comment, and Commander Trish Sanchez, of the San Mateo drugs unit that participated in the raid on Balco last month, would say only the inquiry was continuing.

Victor Conte, who for many years performed in front of the discerning audiences of Californian concert halls and clubs as Walkin' Fish, is now about to face his most discerning audience of all - a grand jury.