Daughter: Doping probe target remains calm
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BALCO founder Victor Conte poses with a photo of Barry Bonds with the drug ZMA written on his hat.
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SAN FRANCISCO, California (Reuters) -- The man at the center of a federal probe into steroid usage by athletes is calm amid an international furor over his firm, but the rest of the family has been badly hurt by the scandal, his adult daughter said.
Victor Conte, owner of BALCO labs south of San Francisco, is suspected of being the source of the new designer THG steroid that has riled international sport. But his daughter Kisha told Reuters he continued to work at his other firm SNAC, which produces a zinc nutritional supplement he claims can help athletic performance.
"He doesn't seem to be affected," she said in an interview late Friday. "He seems fine, he tells us everything will be OK, which I believe it will."
"He still works and runs his company."
The grand jury has met weekly in recent weeks to probe whether BALCO was the source of illegal steroids, including the new designer steroid tetrahydrogestrinone, or THG. San Francisco Giants star Barry Bonds and his teammate Benito Santiago testified in the case behind closed doors on Thursday.
Baseball slugger Jason Giambi, who had played for the nearby Oakland Athletics for years before joining the New York Yankees, also been subpoenaed to appear.
Conte has not spoken publicly since the hearings began. His family decided to speak out after Reuters reported that Conte's ex-wife Audrey Conte was institutionalized in mid-November on drug charges.
"We're upset. We're going 'as if this isn't tragic enough, now they're going to drag in all of mom's personal business,"' she said.
"Of course it's embarrassing to us because then it goes through to us and every person we know now knows all these very private things about our family."
Kisha Conte, who is in her 20s, said her mother's drug charges have nothing to do with BALCO and said her parents had not spoken in 10 years following a bitter divorce. She added that her mother suffered from mental health problems.
Jim Fox, the district attorney for San Mateo, California, where the Contes live, told Reuters criminal proceedings against Audrey Conte, 47, had been suspended because she had been sent for care at a mental health institution.
The Contes had three daughters, all young adults now who are having a rough time seeing both parents in legal cross-hairs.
"We're having a hard time dealing with it," Kisha Conte said. "Our mom's going through all this, our dad's going through all this and, you know, our lives were completely normal like six months ago. We didn't expect for all this to happen so it's kind of difficult for us."
Kisha Conte, the eldest daughter, said she was confident her father did not distribute the THG steroid at the center of the scandal.
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