For the past several years, Galea has spent a lot of time in Israel, volunteering and fundraising for the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Aviv, the largest rehab hospital in the Middle East. He has trained its physiotherapists in the latest techniques (sports injuries apparently have much in common with those suffered in conflict) and donated a state-of-the-art isokinetics machine to test and rehab arms and legs. He has also brought influential friends to visit, including Jeff Royer, a general partner for the Arizona Diamondbacks. Dr. Shlomo Noy, the hospital director, marvels at Galea’s dedication. “He’s a very positive guy, lots of enthusiasm and always willing to help,” he says. “We never paid him, or gave him other compensation.”
David Cynamon, the former co-owner of the Toronto Argonauts, was another Sheba visitor. (Galea was the team doctor until his resignation this past winter.) He was so impressed with the physician’s zeal that he purchased a sculpture in Galea’s honour. Welcome, a work by Romeo Britto, now sits outside the Tel Aviv complex. Cynamon, who has known Galea for 15 years, says he can’t reconcile what he reads in the media with the man he knows. Tony drives a pickup, dresses in athletic gear, is the first to reach for the cheque, and has little love for money or fame, he says. “It’s never been about publicity or climbing the ladder,” says Cynamon. “All I know is that he has always had the best intentions. For him, it’s all about the healing.”
When it comes to broken athletes, however, that desire to mend is a little too fierce for some. Galea’s boundary-pushing work frequently raises eyebrows. Paul Melia, head of the Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport, says athletes and coaches had raised concerns about Galea’s methods in the past. There was no formal investigation, or warnings to athletes to stay away, but plenty of unease about the doctor’s HGH advocacy and PRP use. “We’ve been keeping a watchful eye on all of that,” says Melia. And Actovegin, although now legal, was once banned by WADA after staff from Lance Armstrong’s U.S. Postal Service cycling team were filmed throwing away empty vials during the 2000 Tour de France. Bodybuilding websites suggest the drug boosts the potency of steroids. But no study has been able to confirm that.
Galea also has a history of ignoring rules. At the 2000 Games in Sydney, where he was helping out Bailey and the track team in an unofficial capacity, Australian customs officers stopped him at the airport carrying an undeclared medical bag. (Olympic anti-doping protocols demand supply lists be submitted months in advance.)
But even now, he is hardly a pariah in Canadian sports. A week after the Winter Games, Galea and Melia appeared on the same panel at a symposium on peak athletic performance in Vancouver. The doctor isn’t giving interviews these days, but in a podcast from the conference, he provided something that sounded an awful lot like a defence. Croaking through a painful-sounding case of laryngitis, Galea went on the attack, charging that anti-doping hysteria is threatening to rob sports medicine of all useful treatments. “Unfortunately because we deal with elite athletes and sports and Olympics, severe anxiety and fear has arisen because of what’s known as Satan’s drug—human growth hormone—which has been cloaked in a shroud of evil,” he says. Simply applying a blanket ban to a naturally occuring hormone makes no sense. “We have to establish objective debate and to define the clear border of what is tissue-enhancing and what is performance-enhancing.” Maybe it is more complicated than right and wrong.
