For most of us, our images and understanding of drugs and organised crime are determined primarily by fictional accounts we either read or watch on TV or at the movies.
Here, the story arc is generally anchored by the main drugs supplier, an unusually intelligent tough guy of indeterminate nationality surrounded by thugs who execute (sometimes literally) his every command.
At the receiving end is the sap, the one stupid enough to inject needles into himself or snort a dangerous mix of cocaine and talcum powder while paying handsomely for the privilege.
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This one-dimensional account of what could be described as a market in perfect equilibrium, one where supply rises to meet demand, is sufficient for entertainment purposes.
Eventually, the baddie gets caught, though in real life, this happens more infrequently than many of us would imagine.
Take this fictional scenario a stage further and assume that the switched-on tough guy identifies another, even more lucrative revenue stream which, when activated, also provides the drugs user with an opportunity to make some money too.
Our Mr Big already operates in a risky business, so any hesitation he may feel to add another, marginal, element of risk to his operation is more than offset by the potential rewards.
How to legitimately tilt odds in one’s favour is something many people mull over when placing a bet on a weekend football match, or when considering the prospective value of derivative products capable of underpinning an equity investment, for example.
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However, imagine the enormous returns on investment available should you be in a position to both supply performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) to sportsmen and then illegally influence a sporting outcome by betting on what becomes a virtual certainty, particularly if, for good measure, you’ve also bribed the referee.
The potential profits are colossal, effectively underwritten by the recipient of the PEDs who stands to gain himself, both financially and in terms of the glory associated with winning.
I’m not for a minute suggesting that sportsmen who take drugs are ‘victims’ – far from it – but their potential financial rewards pale when compared with those who effect the supply of drugs.
One senior police officer told me that such operations are not dissimilar to a website and its affiliates. The affiliate can make serious money, but in effect, he’s always working for the benefit of the website who receive the bulk of any profits.
Ever since Lance Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles, there’s been a growing realisation that a) he couldn’t possibly have operated alone and b) the probable extent and availability of PEDs across other sports is truly alarming.
Yet drugs and sport have mixed, both for profit and political gain, for years.
Decades before Ben Johnson ‘won’ the Olympic 100 metres title in Seoul a quarter of a century ago, East German athletes were notoriously frequent consumers of PEDs.
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Looking back, is it realistic to assume that sprinters with whom Johnson mixed, or that athletes dismayed at being defeated by known East German drugs-users were not tempted to balance the scales?
No. Nor is it far-fetched to directly link organised crime with sport, the wholesale supply of drugs and match-fixing.
Events in Australia this week may have proved the case once and for all after an Australian Crime Commission (ACC) investigation into PEDs revealed that several of the country’s most successful teams, across its major sporting codes, had actually formed alliances with organised crime figures.
These underworld figures allegedly supplied athletes with illegal drugs and offered financial support to clubs in return for the clubs agreeing to match-fixing.
The Commission has promised to name and shame all guilty parties which are believed to include athletes, coaches, sports scientists, doctors and even anti-ageing clinics who illegally prescribed the PEDs.
In Madrid, meanwhile, Jorg Jaksche became the first high-profile cyclist to give evidence in the Operation Puerto trial at which Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes is on trial accused of supplying PEDs.
Jaksche claimed that Fuentes would charge £3,400 to transfuse one bag of blood; displaying an impressive entrepreneurial streak, Fuentes would apparently offer a discount for cyclists who took two bags.
Jaksche, who has already admitted to doping, said that Fuentes supplied him with a variety of drugs including EPO, IGF-1, an insulin derivative and female hormones which stimulated testosterone production.
The 2005 Tour de France runner up, Ivan Basso, also gave evidence in which he said he agreed to pay Fuentes almost £60,000, but eventually handed over less than a quarter of this when police raids scuppered his plan.
The drugs net widened when Jaksche implicated a Polish doctor, Markus Choina, who is also alleged to have supplied banned drugs to Spanish football team, Real Sociedad.
In the 1980s, Chiona worked with Poland’s track and field athletes and later with the national football team. According to Spainish newspaper El Pais, which published papers belonging to Fuentes, one particular document identifies Choina as a supplier of two specific drugs designed to counter the side-effects of EPO and another known to be a powerful stimulant.
The former Real Sociedad president, Inaki Badiola, claims that for seven years immediately prior to his appointment (2000-07), the club paid almost £300,000 a year “in black money to buy medicines and to pay Fuentes”.
Closer to home, Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger said this week he was “always a believer that there’s a lot of cheating going on in our game and that we are not strong enough with what happens, nor with doping, nor with the corruption of referees, nor with match-fixing”.
Does this really come as a major surprise? Probably not – the ACC report claims that the largest AFL clubs are wealthy enough to employ more than 100 support staff for their players. The report implies that the clubs can easily source “peptides and hormones” from China that have yet to be approved for human use.
As the direct and indirect value of global sport continues to grow well beyond the current estimates of £250 billion, one wonders where all this is leading.
Some scientists talk of a process of gene manipulation (or doping) which involves amending an athlete’s DNA whereby an EPO gene could theoretically be implanted which would allow an athlete to carry more oxygen in his bloodstream, while simultaneously boosting his natural production of human growth hormone which builds muscle in spectacular fashion.
Couldn’t happen? Take a look at America’s NFL where steroid abuse is understood to be widespread among enormous athletes whose life expectancy is often decades below where it should be.
We regularly examine the business of sport on several levels, a process which involves analysing media rights, transfer values, merchandising revenues and so on. Perfectly legitimate sports-related businesses have grown on the back of this, most notably the gaming industry.
Yet events of the past week tend to make us stand back and wonder whether we’re actually talking small beer compared with how much organised crime is pocketing from the deliberate manipulation of professional sport.
We may like to believe it’s comparatively negligible. Unfortunately this almost certainly isn’t the case.