You'd be hard pressed to find a more disgusting figure from the world of sports over the past half century than Victor Conte.  He constructed a criminal enterprise - BALCO Laboratory - for the express purpose of helping athletes cheat to break records, win medals and make fortunes and has taken every opportunity to keep himself on the radar since he became a drug felon.

Unrepentant in his way, Conte has picked his spots to name names.  While going out of his way to protect Barry Bonds and his size 10 head, Conte had no problem blowing the whistle on Marion Jones, Tim Montogomery and other athletes who he helped cheat. 

And yes, taking drugs to win races, hit home runs or make more tackles is cheating.  If you are of the belief that everyone does "it," than everyone cheats.  Cheating doesn't become not cheating just because a majority of people may be engaged in the given behavior.  The athletes by virtue of taking every conceiveable precaution to avoid getting caught cheating, know that they are cheating by taking drugs.  If performance-enhancing drug taking athletes didn't think what they were doing was wrong, they would not have tried to cover their steps, and once caught would have come clean.

Back to Conte the Rat.  Now that the IOC is considering what to do with the medals that formerly belonged to Marion Jones, Conte has stuck his nose into the mix, telling the IOC that he has info that will shed light on the drug cheating ways of other Olympic athletes.  Conte says that he wants to set things right with sports and help to level the playing field.  The best part is that Conte says he is doing this to help the young athletes of the future.

Or course all of this is nonsense.  Conte is acting on Conte's behalf and wants to keep himself in the spot light.  Just a week after he came out from under his rock to try and protect Barry Bonds from the Feds by telling people that there's no way to know if Bonds ever failed a BALCO-administered drug test, Conte wants to help sporting officials.  

If Conte really wanted to help clean up sports he could have spilled his guts from Day 1, or at any point over several years time since he became a felon.  Conte is nothing but an opportunist. 

Don't forget that Major League Baseball's Mitchell Report is supposed to come out Thursday and from what I hear there will be some pretty big names named.  Perhaps Conte sees his usefulness coming to an end with the info that has been uncovered and that will be released in the Mitchell Report. 

There's a new kid on the block when it comes to drug info, and his name is Kirk Radomski.  Radomski is the former clubhouse boy who became MLB's biggest supplier of PEDs after Victor and his BALCO Boys got busted and he has been singing to the Feds and MLB officials for over 2 years.  Radomski is much more relevant to the PED issue than is Conte, and Victor the Rat just doesn't like the competition.  Once this report hits, Conte will be pushed back further, or down further on the list of relevant rats.  So Victor is trying his best to stay on the sports pages and as a result get his chubby.

Conte knows that his time is running out.  He really has nothing to offer to anyone other than this last little tidbit of heresay evidence dealing with some Olympic athletes.  And isn't it interesting that Conte has all this info about Olympic athletes, but cannot shed any additional light on the Barry Bonds case?  Olympic athletes are high-profile to a point, but who really knows or cares about the female Greek sprinter who is involved in this reassignment of Jones' medals?  On the other hand, Barry Bonds is one of the most well-known figures in the world of sport, and we're supposed to believe that Conte doesn't have any pertinent info about Bonds and his drug use?  That Bonds was a client of BALCO and Conte doesn't have anything useful to offer the authorities?

Certainly Ratso Conte will get the ears of those in the sporting world and may even weasel himself in to a position where he can help the drug police catch the drug cheats.  But people need to be aware of what he has done, why he did it and the fact that he is a felon and a self-serving rat.  If he has info that the authorities are interested in, let them talk to him, but keep him and his sanctimonious phoniness away from us.