U.S. investigators are looking to determine why Canadian doctor Anthony Galea is so popular with a raft of athletes - specifically, they want to know if he is distributing performance-enhancing drugs.
He makes house calls to Tiger Woods. He's lauded as a hero in Israel. And at 50, the father of seven believes he has tapped into the fountain of youth by self-administering the same controversial substance that has made him an FBI target.
Anthony Galea's openness to unorthodox healing methods has made him a player in big-time sports. Now it's gained the attention of police investigators, who want to know whether the Canadian doctor thinks he's above the law.
This week, Mr. Woods became the latest athlete to have to explain his relationship with Dr. Galea. Numerous stars, including New York Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez, have faced similar questioning from journalists and police investigators in recent months. Mr. Woods came prepared: He told reporters at a news conference before the Masters that he invited the Toronto physician to his Florida mansion to help rehabilitate his injured knee and Achilles tendon in 2008 and 2009, because he felt a "certain comfort level" with Dr. Galea, since he had "worked with so many athletes."
While Mr. Woods denies using performance-enhancing drugs, Dr. Galea faces four criminal charges in Canada related to smuggling and distributing banned substances, human growth hormone and Actovegin, a derivative of calf's blood. In the United States, FBI agents are probing whether he has distributed HGH to professional athletes.
None of the allegations have been proven, and Dr. Galea has maintained his innocence in previous interviews. He declined to be interviewed for this story.
But there is no denying that, within the insular world of high-performance sports, Dr. Galea has gained a reputation as a high priest of alternative healing. His skills, supporters say, are rooted in his willingness to look beyond Western medicine to speed them back to competition.
And he practices what he prescribes: For 10 years, Dr. Galea says he has injected himself and non-athlete patients with HGH, which he and a small number of physicians believe is an anti-aging treatment. He says the injections help him keep up with his second wife, a former tennis player who is 28 years old and the mother of three of his seven children. Raised by devout Roman Catholic parents and a graduate of a Toronto Catholic high school, Dr. Galea had what he calls a "spiritual awakening" during a 2001 visit to Jerusalem, and now describes himself as a devout Zionist and biblical scholar. Every three months he flies to Israel, where he is revered in medical circles for donating his time and raising funds to help rehabilitate injured soldiers.
Far from being a criminal, his backers say, Dr. Galea is a visionary who is being unfairly persecuted by police and the media. "Is this a witch hunt?" asked Donovan Bailey, the former Canadian sprint champion who was a long-time patient of Dr. Galea.
They say the doctor's name has spread from athlete to athlete, agent to agent. His patients have ranged from hockey's Tie Domi to baseball's Carlos Delgado, from Olympic swimmer Dara Torres to figure skater Patrick Chan. NFL running back Jamal Lewis "had a bad injury and it was like his career was over and he came back so strong," said Khalil Carter, a former Toronto Argonaut. "So guys are like, 'Who did you see?' He says, 'Dr. Galea in Canada,' and it's like, boom. That's all it took."
The procedure Dr. Galea used on Mr. Woods - a controversial blood-spinning technique called plasma replacement therapy that proponents say speeds healing - has gained popularity in recent years, but Dr. Galea was among the first in North America to use it eight years ago. NFL wide receiver Javon Walker told The New York Times that, in March, Dr. Galea arranged for him to have cartilage-replacement surgery on his knee in Jerusalem because the procedure is not approved in the U.S. or Canada. Mr. Walker said the recovery time was half what it would have been if he'd had the procedure doctors recommended in the United States.
"Obviously, you mention HGH and a sports medicine doctor and Tiger Woods and you've got a story," said Tom Bacher, a family doctor in Toronto who worked with Dr. Galea as a Canadian team doctor at the Maccabi Games in Israel in 2005 and 2009. "I just want people to know that Tony's legal problems are Tony's legal problems. From a personal point of view, there's nobody who cares more about his patients than Tony Galea."
Both criminal investigations stem from a Sept. 16 incident, when his assistant was stopped trying to drive a grey Nissan owned by Dr. Galea across the border at Buffalo carrying vials of HGH and Actovegin, which are banned substances in the U.S. According to court documents, Mary Anne Catalano said her employer asked her to carry his medical bag for him because he had been "red flagged" while attempting to cross the border with the same supplies.
The Globe and Mail has learned that this was not the first time Dr. Galea had been questioned by border officials.
During the Sydney Olympics in 2000, several medical doctors working with the Canadian Olympic team said Dr. Galea was detained by Australian customs officers when he tried to enter the country with a medical bag that he had not declared on the airline manifest, something the Canadian doctors say is normally done months in advance. The doctors said a team official was contacted by Australian customs officers, who wanted to know whether there was truth to Dr. Galea's claim that he was a physician with the Canadian team.
"Very simply, he was not a member of the Canadian Olympic team. He was not a part of the athletics medical team. So he was there in his own capacity," said Alan Vernec, the official doctor for the Canadian track team in Sydney and now the scientific director for the World Anti-Doping Agency.
Officials with Australian customs said Dr. Galea was not charged. He was permitted to enter the country.
Mr. Bailey, who was staying outside of the athletes' village, says Dr. Galea was in Sydney to work with him and other sprinters, but he could not recall who arranged for his trip. He said Dr. Galea gave him an IV to treat his dehydration, but never banned substances. That year, Mr. Bailey suffered from the flu and finished poorly.
He said Dr. Galea did not mention an incident at customs. "He wouldn't mention that to me anyways. I mean, that's not the relationship that he and I have," Mr. Bailey said.
Their relationship began in the mid-1990s. At the time, Dr. Galea was running a busy practice in west Toronto, as well as serving as the team doctor for the Canadian freestyle ski team, which had hired him around 1989, shortly after graduating from McMaster University medical school.
It was Dr. Galea's treatment of Mr. Bailey's torn Achilles that launched him into the most exclusive circles in sports medicine. Mr. Bailey says it doesn't surprise him that Dr. Galea is now treating the likes of Mr. Woods and Mr. Rodriguez. Athletes recommending doctors to one another is "no different than one athlete having a great investment banker."
"I came back from a ruptured Achilles," Mr. Bailey said. "So I wasn't walking. And I came back to be one of the top sprinters in the world. Yeah, word absolutely gets around.… I'm the top sprinter on the planet. So obviously … the top baseball, basketball, football, golfer on the planet - they can get a hold of me. That's sort've how it works."
Dr. Galea's friend David Cynamon, the former owner of the Toronto Argonauts who hired him as team doctor in 2004, says it was Dr. Galea's commitment to healing that led him to treat such a range of athletes.
"The Hamilton Tiger-Cats asked if he would help with [quarterback]Jason Maas," Mr. Cynamon said. "I found out about it after and I got jokingly mad. But you can't get mad because he's like the Red Cross, he can't say no. Jason Maas might as well have been Tiger Woods."
With reports from Robert McLeod, Celia Donnelly and James Christie