One of the stories that has gone under the radar during the lead-up to the Super Bowl has been the allegations of HGH use against Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning. Considering this is almost definitely going to be the final game of Manning’s career, that’s not surprising, but it’s still weird that there hasn’t been a single peep out of anyone about the Al Jazeera story which claimed that Manning received human growth hormone.
All of that ended today, when The Washington Post dropped a bombshell story on all of us involving the allegations against Manning. According to The Post, Manning hired two private investigators to visit the parents of Al Jazeera’s key witness. The duo reportedly visited the home of Charlie Sly’s parents five days before the report came out.
After they told their daughter to call 911 the night of Dec. 22, Randall and Judith Sly stepped outside to talk to the strangers, who clarified they were private investigators, not cops. They had come to this red brick house with a well-manicured lawn looking for the Slys’ 31-year-old son, Charlie, a pharmacist who was the primary source in the upcoming documentary.
While that’s certainly…weird, it doesn’t exactly prove that Manning is guilty of anything. It’s a really sketchy move, but it’s not like these people went to the Sly’s home with big bags of money or anything.
What is a bit damning is that Ari Fleischer, who Manning hired to handle public relations once this news broke, admitted that some type of drugs were shipped to Manning’s home under his wife’s name from The Guyer Institute.
The story Sly said he made up contained at least a bit of truth, though: The Guyer Institute did ship medication to Ashley Manning, Fleischer confirmed. Citing Ashley’s right to privacy, Fleischer declined to specify whether the medication was human growth hormone, which is banned by professional sports leagues and only legal to prescribe in America for a few specific conditions, such as growth hormone deficiency, HIV wasting syndrome and short bowel syndrome.
The entire Manning-HGH story has been really weird from the start for a number of reasons. This story is just another chapter in what has been the strangest story in football over the last few weeks.
(via The Washington Post)
