Pomona boxer "Sugar" Shane Mosley acknowledged unknowing use of a blood-doping drug as he responded late Friday to a report that he engaged in an elaborate doping program before his second victory over Oscar De La Hoya in 2003.
Mosley said Darryl Hudson, his former strength and conditioning coach from Pomona, persuaded him to take what Mosley now believes was the blood-doping drug Erythropoietin (EPO) by telling the boxer it was a legal drug used to help AIDS patients battling poor immune systems. Mosley said that Hudson described the drug as "icing on the cake" to the boxer's highly intense workout regimen.
Citing multiple sources, Sports Illustrated reported on its website that the lead investigator in the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative case revealed the details of Mosley's drug regimen to anti-doping conference attendees last year.
Jeff Novitzky, an Internal Revenue Service special agent who supervised the 2003 raids of BALCO's Burlingame, Calif., headquarters that counted baseball slugger Barry Bonds and Olympic sprinter Marion Jones as clients, reportedly told attendees at a conference in Colorado Springs, Colo., that Mosley used BALCO founder Victor Conte's designer steroid "the clear" and testosterone known as "the cream," in addition to EPO.
Mosley, in a statement, acknowledged giving Conte a check for $1,500 for BALCO products. Reached later Friday by telephone at his Big Bear training compound, Mosley was candid in saying that he at least twice injected himself in the stomach before his second fight against De La Hoya.
"I didn't understand it to be blood doping, I was told it would keep my [red] blood cells high," Mosley said. "I didn't know the extent of this. To be honest, I didn't care to have it, but [Hudson] kept saying this stuff was great, and described it as 'icing on the cake,' because when you work as hard as I do, you need something to help you recover. Like vitamins, I thought."
Novitzky, the SI.com report said, presented evidence at the November conference that included tests and calendars showing how Mosley's endurance-boosting red blood cells soared in August 2003, two weeks after he allegedly began taking EPO. A doping calendar seized from BALCO showed Mosley's final dose of EPO was given five days before his Sept. 13 bout with De La Hoya. After defeating De La Hoya by split decision in 2001, Mosley won the 2003 bout in Las Vegas by unanimous decision.
