Can’t Think of a Title, It’s Just Sad

This is from Sports Illustrated, Jan. 15, 2008. Full story here: sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/magazine/01/15/sins.of.a.father012…

Sins of a Father
Corey Gahan was a champion in-line skater at 13. Then his dad put him on a regimen of steroids and HgH

Corey suspected that he was “doing something wrong,” but he trusted his dad and his trainer.

The kid hated needles. But it hardly mattered. About once a week he’d roll up his sleeve, expose his shoulder and feel the cold metal plunge into what little muscle he had there. He would scrunch up his face as if he had smelled something foul and often close his eyes until the contents of the syringe emptied into his bloodstream. Then he could return to his PlayStation 2.

The injections had started in 2002, when Corey Gahan was one of the top in-line skaters in the world for his age group. At first the shots contained B-12 vitamins; soon he began receiving human growth hormone as well, and later steady doses of steroids in the form of synthetic testosterone. Both his father and his trainer, Corey says, assured him that the shots were for the best. If it stung like a bitch when the needle pierced his skin, the payoff would come when he zoomed past the competition on the track.

The prick of the needle was accompanied by a pinch of guilt; it felt, as Corey puts it, “like I was doing something wrong.” But he believed in his dad, a charismatic and fiercely ambitious former high school wrestler. He also trusted his trainer, a bodybuilder who acted like a big brother. Besides, what did Corey know about the substances being injected into his body? “Testosterone cypionate, it’s just a word,” he says. “It doesn’t have a meaning. At least not when you’re 13.”

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9 Replies to “Can’t Think of a Title, It’s Just Sad”

  1. Ok, all of you fucking assholes who want to know what the big deal with doping it – read that article. Read it real fucking close. This is why doping is bad – it normalizes this dangerous behavior.

  2. Dad says, “Am I sorry? Absolutely. One hundred percent. It started out as an innocent thing and blossomed into a nightmare. It wasn’t like I was trying to distribute steroids to all the little speedskaters and he and I were making a profit from it. It was just him and me trying to make him the best at what he was doing.”

    So he’s not sorry at all. He was “innocently” injecting illegal drugs into his kid to cheat at sports. Zero class.

  3. Normalized dangerous behavior?

    I guess we need to ban drinking and never consider legalizing street drugs because we don’t want kids to drink or do drugs. I guess we should ban porn because of the sickos who get off and produce child porn right?

    Your Point-Fu is weak.

  4. The father was an asshole. Nobody’s ever said kids should be given steroids, even those of us who have no problem with doping.

  5. “Nobody’s ever said kids should be given steroids…”

    Here, here.

    My motto: You can do whatever you want as long as it doesn’t involve children or farm animals.

    Oh wait. Now we dope both of those.

    Damn. There goes a good motto.

  6. Fucking with kids…YOUR OWN KIDS…gives you a one way ticket to a special place in hell. Fuckwad dad is cool with it? He should be strung up by the balls.

    Point. DO NOT fuck with kids. I guarrantee if someone screwed with my 6 and 8 year old nieces, even if it was my own sister, I would kick the shit out of them.

    We all need to understand, drugs are for recreational use only.

  7. This isn’t even about the drugs. Anyone who can be described well into middle age as a “former high school wrestler” seriously should not be allowed to have children. Even without the ‘roid hookup this asshole would still be pushing his kid too hard to perform just to make up for his own sense of failure as a human being. I’m sure it must be hard to know that your biggest accomplishments all happened before you picked up a razor, but some people really just need to grow up and move on.