Mr Muscle Man Shane Charter's supplementary benefits Shane Charter's gentle voice belies his imposing physique. SHANE Charter was a wiry kid. Tall, skinny and quick on his feet, he'd always been a decent football player. In fact, he was captain of the Castlemaine under-18s. It was when he stepped up to the seniors that he realised the game wasn't all about skill. He was getting knocked around every other week - more rag doll than ruckman. He needed bulk and muscles, and fast. "So I hit the gym and never came back," he says. I put on 10kg and never went back to football. I loved it. Embracing the performance-enhancing drugs then in vogue - nandrolone, boldenone, Stanozolol, Dianabol, ephedrine and more - he sculpted himself into a bodybuilding and powerlifting champion. Yet for all the tanning oil and vein-popping poses that define this strange subculture, Charter says it's less about vanity and more about chemistry. "When you first start, you feel like superman, like you can walk through walls," he says. Conversely, when you 'dump' (complete a cycle of treatment) the depression is extreme. He knows people who have killed themselves as a result of the debilitating lows that can accompany steroid abuse. Impotence, shrinking testicles, sterility and the growth of unwanted breast tissue - what's known in the industry as "bitch-tits" - are other hazards. Shane Charter before he hit the gym . Charter has never been one to shy away from baring his chest but he says it's the addictive nature of the highs - not necessarily the need to look ripped - that keeps most users coming back. He should know. A man who walks the talk, the 45-year-old has been on "the gear" all his adult life. If he's pushing steroids, he's using them. If he's promoting peptides, he's injecting them himself. If he's treating sportsmen with platelet-rich plasma, he's tried it on his own dodgy knees. While researching a paper on steroid detection in rats for his university biochemistry degree, Charter used some of the steroids on the animals and kept the rest for himself. Research and development, an enterprise that allows scientists to legitimately import a range of chemicals into Australia with a permit, remains part of the work Charter does at his Melbourne anti-ageing clinic, Dr Ageless. Dr Ageless began his professional life as a pharmaceutical salesman for global medical research giant AstraZeneca, building his own business as a personal trainer on the side in the late 1990s. He began attracting some star clients - football players such as Luke Darcy, Nathan Brown, Simon Garlick, Scott West and Shane Woewodin. So impressed was Woewodin with Charter's dietary advice, the Demons star praised him during his acceptance speech for the 2000 Brownlow Medal (Woewodin has since issued a statement saying he received nutritional advice, and nothing more, from Charter). Shane Charter lifting weights. Picture: Chris Scott Another of Charter's star clients from that period was James Hird, the football legend now at the centre of the peptide storm gripping the AFL. Charter says it was he who introduced Hird to the world of supplements. He is adamant the Essendon coach had always been a stickler for anti-doping rules. "Hirdy wouldn't touch them before he met me and he never took anything that was against the rules," he says. He says Hird introduced him to club chairman David Evans, who took him on as a consultant at investment firm JB Were for about three months, guiding executives on health and wellbeing. On meeting Charter, it's easy to understand how he was able to ingratiate himself with the big end of town. With a gentle voice that belies his imposing physique, he presents himself as a man who knows his science. An expert, a businessman, a professional. Everything is milligrams, hormones, fragments, molecules, volumes, kilograms, hydration, fat, composition, muscle and more. He documents his correspondence with the diligence of a librarian and watches his bank balance like an accountant. Shane Charter in the gym. His multi-million-dollar vineyard home in Sunbury, on Melbourne's outskirts, features a fully equipped gym, the walls of which are plastered with anatomical drawings and charts. Biology textbooks are piled high on his office desk and pictures of famous sports stars he has worked with line the walls. Less visible, however, is evidence of his criminal clients. In Charter's catch-all approach to business, everyone is welcome - underworld figures, athletes, lawyers, executives. Over the years he has treated a range of colourful characters including an alleged major drug trafficker who is aligned with the Calabrian mafia. Boxer Barry Michael was once a client. So were bikie enforcer Toby Mitchell and his family, as was Tony Mokbel's former girlfriend, Danielle McGuire. Charter knows Tony Doherty, the well-known gym operator whose Brunswick facility operates next door to a Bandidos bikie clubhouse. He baulks at naming his famous football friends, but in talks with the Herald Sun has mentioned controversy-prone North Melbourne hero Wayne Carey and West Coast bad boy Ben Cousins, who Charter says he has twice chaperoned to a rehabilitation clinic in Thailand. He met "Cuzzi" through their mutual mate, the late underworld figure and sports manager John Giannarelli. Cousins' battle with illicit drug addiction has been well publicised, but Charter has no reason to believe he ever used anything in a performance-enhancing capacity. His sporting interests extend further than football. Charter says he has given dietary advice to past members of the Australian swimming team and admits telling one international swimmer who won Olympic gold in Sydney how to "optimise" his growth hormone levels. Charter's first and only brush with the law came in 2004 during Operation Macer, a joint investigation by Victoria Police's major drug investigation division and Customs. Before that, he had never been on the law enforcement radar. So it was no surprise when he turned Crown witness in the drug prosecution that saw a number of figures jailed over a large-scale steroid and pseudoephedrine trafficking operation. County Court judge John Smallwood noted Charter had been a genuine witness and seemed confused about why he would throw away a successful career by turning to crime. "You clearly were very good at what you did and gave advice to high-powered people and organisations," sentencing judge Smallwood said. Why you commenced this offending is beyond me. The judge remarked that if not for those crimes, Charter's conduct throughout his life would have been "exemplary." Charter struggles to explain it himself. "When you are mixing in a world of sporting stars, high-powered businessman and criminals, a lot goes on that the general public are never aware of," he says. Unfortunately when you get too close to a hurricane you can get sucked in. Charter had been introduced to steroids by a powerlifter who the Herald Sun has established has links with a group called the Council of Australian Powerlifting Organisations. Based in Albury, on the Hume Highway, CAPO operates a competition that is not subject to anti-doping rules. Some of its members have drug convictions and one of its competitions allegedly once took place in a Rebels bikie clubhouse. Charter prefers not to revisit these links, saying he's not proud. But it is his tangled past that makes him an asset in the biggest anti-doping probe in the history of Australian sport. He knows all the right people in all the wrong places and, more importantly, understands the science behind manipulating performance-enhancing drug testing regimes because he has done it himself. Privately, Australian regulators concede that they are losing the fight against performance-enhancing drugs in sport and believe this will change only with big reforms to the way performance-enhancing substances are regulated. Charter says even the latest biological passports, which track changes in an athlete's blood for evidence of doping, are not foolproof. "These biological passport tests are limited and can be manipulated," he says. He is assisting the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority in its efforts to unravel the "exotic" supplements program adopted by the Bombers last season. Charter alleges that he sourced a range of substances for sacked sports scientist Stephen Dank while Dank worked for Essendon. He has supplied ASADA with a list of peptides and hormones he claims Dank had requested. Of the substances Dank allegedly requested, Charter has records that indicate he supplied him with growth hormone six, CJC-1295, Melatonan II, Thymosin beat 4 and mechano growth factor. Separately, he recalls that Dank had also asked him for advice about using what is known as a Myers Cocktail. Popular among bodybuilders, it is a 45-minute intravenous infusion of various vitamins and minerals. And at about $800 per drip, it's not cheap. Charter says he ordered the required equipment, but Dank never collected it. Dank denies any wrongdoing in relation to his work with footballers. And the Herald Sun does not suggest any of Charter's clients named in this article obtained illegal drugs from him. What the future holds for Charter isn't clear. On the home front, the father of three plans to have another child. He and his wife have previously conceived using IVF. His steroid use had rendered him temporarily sterile and had led to a heart attack before he'd turned 40. He and his wife intend to use the remaining embryos from their earlier treatment, this time through a surrogate. In the meantime, Dr Ageless has celebrity agent Max Markson helping him get a book about his life and times on to the shelves.