Agassi Insists He Never Took Steroids, Criticizes Federer
In an exclusive hour-long interview with Inside Tennis, Andre Agassi reflected on his drug use, his lying and the intense response of Federer and others. A small excerpt.
INSIDE TENNIS: Andre you noted that you’re a man that’s written a book called “Open” and that some day you would sit down some and look an interviewer in the eye and tell him or her the unvarnished truth. So let me look you in the eye and ask a straight unvarnished question. Have you ever used performance…
ANDRE AGASSI: No, no.
IT: No steroids?
AA: No, no, no, no. There is a huge distinction between the desire to cheat others and the self-infliction of hurting yourself. That was always my deal. My deal was always internal. My life wasn’t a lie. My life was constant pursuit of the truth. You asked me a straight question and I’ll give you a straight answer. But if you look at who I am over the years, it was never about screwing somebody else, it was always about my own struggles and my own demons and my own deal. Performance enhancers are fundamentally straight, just cheating. It’s a different cat that does that.
IT: So you’re 27, you get this letter that says, “Hey, you’ve been busted.” You’re desperate. You write a letter saying you ingested the drug by accident. But it was a lie. And more recently, you reflected on the whole notion of lying. But most people just say a “lie is a lie.”
AA: Let me ask you this. Is it a lie when you tell your first wife, “I do?”
IT: I know you said that and I thought about that. That’s a very interesting question. A wedding vow is more of a pledge, even you could contend a hope, and, of course in our culture, time and time again …
AA: But my point is – if you don’t know yourself – you believe it and you say it. And I’ve never known myself. There are a lot of things I’ve said out of confusion, out of exploration.
When somebody says,’ “Did you love tennis?” And you just had a match, where you accomplished something. I reserve the right to have those conflicts. I don’t qualify my conflicts. My book has been a reconciliation of my psyche. There were days I loved it, there were days I hated it. My lies usually started around myself. And that was usually a result of confusion and a contradiction.
How do you express who you are? When you don’t know who you are? So you are left trying to say what’s true, but things end up not being true.
IT: Do you know about the “the 27 Club?”
AA: No.
IT: All these brilliant talents, all these musical geniuses that became entwined in drugs – Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones – died at age 27. So you were 27 and desperate and you had no one to confide in and you winged it …
AA: First of all, I was depressed and I didn’t know it. I didn’t even recognize it as such. Secondly, I was very alone and in a marriage I didn’t want to be in. So I needed some sort of escape, which is the hook, the problem with drugs.
So, would I do it again? No. If I would do it again, I would be a lot clearer on what I’m missing. I would choose much healthier ways. First of all, my wife didn’t even know I was doing it. The reason I refused to conclusively answer how many times I did meth – and it was a lot more than it should have been … But it wasn’t like it had its hooks, because I walked away. I can’t speak to the addiction. What I can speak to is depression and the tools people use to escape that feeling.
IT: Self-destruction was always a part of the picture.
AA: No question, I’ve always had that as part of my life.
IT: On the one hand, you skated. The ATP said, “You’re cool.” On the other hand, when your book came out, the Euros, in particular: Safin, Bruguera, Johansson, Nadal and even Roger hashed you big-time. How did you feel when Roger, our leading light, said, “There’s a dark cloud over our sport?”
AA: Well, I think he’s just wrong. I like Roger, but my experience is that “reacting” is never as good as “responding.” And he can’t possibly make a comment that “There’s a dark cloud” when he doesn’t have all the facts, when he doesn’t know what it is.
I can speak to the merits of what he’s saying. I don’t begrudge him because I’ve reacted a lot in my life and I’ve said a lot of things that were just inaccurate. I believe what he said is not accurate. It’s not the case. Do you want to discuss the merits of why that’s not the case?
IT: So you are saying there’s not a cloud over tennis because…
AA: [It was] 13 years ago? We were always a leader in sports and in protecting tennis from drug cheats. What I did was a performance inhibitor. Just recently we had a case where someone [Richard Gasquet] tested positive for a drug inhibitor, cocaine. He made a claim that it got in his system accidentally.
IT: From that mysterious woman Pamela …
AA: This was supposed to come with a two-year suspension. But it came down to a little humanity. I read the article. It was very clear. [The report said] he’s a man of integrity, we believe him. It was a performance inhibitor. Issue closed. So, if you want to talk about black eyes, let’s stick this in the framework. We need to call it for what it was. I was hurting myself. People might need help.
IT: You’ve contended that there are basically two kinds of drugs, performance enhancers and recreational drugs and your position was that people should be compassionate about recreational drugs. We should reach out to people. People could be having serious problems and there should be some humanity.
AA: Even in the most scrutinizing governance body of sports, WADA, said you know what [Gasquet] fair enough… here’s a little understanding.
Andre Agassi with IT Publisher Bill Simons
Tags: Andre Agassi
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25.November.2009 | 7:20 am
Andrew
Mr. Simmons,
Are you taking Inside Tennis in a new, trashy tabloid, direction?
You should be ashamed for trying to manufacture a Agassi/Federer rift where none exists. Unlike some of the other names you listed, Federer most certainly did not “trash” Agassi “big time.” His comments were much milder than many of the quotes coming from other players. In fact, you misquote Federer. Based on the reporting I’ve seen, he did not say there’s “dark cloud over the sport,” he said there’s a dark cloud “over the ATP.” Indeed, the ATP’s actions (as well as Agassi’s) have been a focus of concern. Federer is on the ATP’s player council, so he has every reason to focus on that perspective. In his comments Federer reminded the interviewer that the current controversy is dwarfed by Agassi’s charitable work, and he expressed hope that the admissions would be “good for Agassi.”
You owe both Agassi and Federer an apology.
25.November.2009 | 12:55 pm
KING ARTHUR
How did Agassi come of crystal meth. It is suppose to be highly addictive. Perhaps Agassi can help addicts become ‘Clean’ with his experience of the substance
28.November.2009 | 7:51 am
Maverick
Mr. Bill Simons,
Shame on you for wanting to cause a rift between two greats,Roger Federer and Andre Agassi. Inside Tennis magazine is at best low grade magazine, with low grade articles. If I was Andre Agassi, I would not have even considered to be interviewed by Bill Simons. He is not factual. He is ignorant. Mr. Bill Simons, there is a thing called research, prior to interviewing someone. I guess you did not know, one needs to research.
Cheap tricks just to get sales of your lousy, inadequate, unprofessional magazine.
It is best that you never interview anyone. You do not have the ability to do such. Federer and Andre are all time greats. Misquotes leads to misunderstanding. I am sure Andre and Federer understand this. People like you are more harmful to tennis than Andre’s use of Crystal Meth. Let’s see if you are man enough to publish an apology, both to Federer and Andre.
18.December.2009 | 11:34 pm
Alan Moore
I don’t think this manufactures a rift between players BUT I do think it is little more than a PR exercise for Agassi. Whether it’s paid for or not, I don’t know, but I do know that it all seems a bit fishy. The questions are very we
The most unsavoury part of the whole interview is that Simons refers to Bruguera, Federer, etc as ‘the Euros’. That really does smacks of racism.
10.March.2011 | 3:29 pm
smithejames
Tennis needs to be scrutinized the same way all professional sports do. As far as Agassi goes; I remember watching him when he was around 35 years old play and the commentator exclaimed Andre could bench press well over 300 lbs. It struck me as odd a tennis player could bench so much weight, especially one of his physical stature. I have been lifting for years and weigh 220 lbs. and I am stronger than most people at any age in most of the gyms I work out at.
I do power benching so I know a little about what a strong person should be able to bench press. I also remember Agassi’s career was in the dumps for a while the same way Barry Bond’s was. Then, out of nowhere, he comes back and is better than ever for years beyond what anyone could imagine—same as Barry.
My experience in the world of lifting weights is that a guy like that could not lift that kind of weight and be a competitive tennis player without taking performance enhancing drugs. You see, tennis is an endurance sport that works against strength in lifting heavy weights. Andre was the Barry Bonds of tennis. And like Barry, he is not admitting to his use of performance enhancing drugs. He thinks it will protect his image. People that know better are not fooled by athletes that cheat. Andre’s career would have ended before he was 30 without them.
I will go as far as to say that every record posted by any professional athlete in the last 20 years is highly suspect. You simply can’t compete with someone that takes performance enhancing drugs on any level. That is how dramatic the effects are. I know because I have tried them and they are amazing. I benched over 400lbs. at 49 years of age just by taking a legal, back then, oral prohormone at less than half the recommended dosage. Injectable steroids are 10 to 20 times more potent than oral prohormones. HGH and the like in the injectable form also have amazing effects on the muscle potential.
Remember, what was legal then, is all illegal now so people can delude themselves into believing they are telling the truth about ILLEGAL performance enhancing drugs that weren’t illegal at the time they used them. Or, at least they justify the lies along the same lines.
I’m not impressed by what we see in professional sports these days because it takes a ton of money to use and stay on these drugs. Average people can’t afford to use them and teams hand them out on candy starting in highschool. At least in power lifting they have classes for people that don’t try to hide the fact they are on steroids.