Big-time steroid dealer has ties to Opelika

Who knew Anytown, USA could be in your own backyard?

We always read stories about places that no one ever heard of, that seem to be normal. Towns where dogs bark and mailmen walk, old men gather to read the newspaper and drink coffee, while women laugh over the buzz of hairdryers. Little, quiet places where "nothing" ever happens ... until one day, it does.

I can't tell you how many stories I've read about a town that I've never heard of where "something" significant was taking place and no one, not even the people who lived there, knew what was going on.

According to the March 17 edition of Sports Illustrated, the Opelika-Auburn was one of those places.

According to SI, and reporters L. Jon Wertheim and David Epstein, Tony Fitton, a major player in the steroid era of the late 1970-90s, lived and did a lot of business out of a lab he ran in Opelika. That's right, Opelika.

Fitton, a top British powerlifter and chemist, according to SI, is known as the "steroid godfather" for his two-decade run as a dealer, revolutionizing the use of the anabolic steroid Dianabol or Dbol.

In the late 1970s, Terry Todd, a well-known powerlifter, founded the National Strength Research Center at Auburn University, said Sports Illustrated. Fitton, who knew Todd, was given a faculty position at the NSRC.
Fitton, according to the magazine, founded a pharmacy in Opelika where he would store his drugs, which he would smuggle into the country from Spain and Italy (where steroids were legal) and then drive cross the country, dealing.

According to SI, Fitton was the go-to guy for "thousands of athletes: Olympians, top NFL draft picks, professional wrestlers, cops he'd met through lifting competitions and garden-variety gym rats. As one federal prosecutor said of Fitton in '85, 'He may have been the biggest (steroid) dealer in the world.'"

In 1981, Fitton was arrested at the Atlanta airport for "illegal trafficking" of anabolic steroids and was fired by Auburn after the arrest, but remained in the area "researching steroids as intensely as ever," said the magazine.

After his second arrest in 1984, Fitton moved to Columbus, Ga. Up until the mid-90s, Fitton was in and out of trouble for dealing steroids throughout the country. In 1997, he was arrested on "conspiracy to distribute narcotics," according to Sports Illustrated, and served four months in a New Jersey prison.

After he was released the next year, Fitton was deported back to England, where he lives today.

It's interesting to me that a guy who is alleged to have so much power in the American sports scene through the development and dealing of steroids once lived in the same town I do. I've been trying to find someone who knew Fitton and where his pharmacy was located, but I haven't had any luck yet. It was almost 30 years ago.

Anyway, if you want to read more about Fitton or the Sports Illustrated article, here's the link.