An investigative reporter involved with the Al Jazeera documentary reportedly linking Peyton Manning to human growth hormone said Tuesday that no specific allegation has been made against the Denver Broncos quarterback.
"The only allegation in the program from Charlie Sly is that growth hormone was sent repeatedly from the [anti-aging clinic] Guyer [Institute] to Ashley Manning in Florida,'' Al Jazeera reporter Deborah Davies told Savannah Guthrie and Carson Daly on TODAY Tuesday. "We're not making the allegation against Peyton Manning."
Manning adviser Ari Fleischer said in an emailed statement to TODAY.com that Davies was “contradicting her own reporting.”
“Al Jazeera is backtracking and retreating. Their story was not credible to begin with and it’s not credible now,” Fleischer said.
The hour-long documentary about doping in sports, which aired on Sunday, alleges that Manning's wife, Ashley, received multiple shipments of HGH from the Guyer Institute in 2011, the same year Manning was recovering from neck fusion surgery. HGH is banned by the NFL, which began random testing for it in 2014.
The five-time NFL MVP's agent told Al Jazeera that the allegations were "outrageous and wrong," and that while Manning was treated at the Guyer Institute that year, he never took any banned substances.
“The allegation that I would do something like that is complete garbage and is totally made up,'' Manning said in a statement Saturday. "It never happened. Never. I really can’t believe somebody would put something like this on the air. Whoever said this is making stuff up.”
While there is not a specific allegation made against Peyton Manning or proof that he used HGH, Davies noted that the quarterback has not denied that his wife received shipments of HGH from Guyer.
Sly is a Texas-based pharmacist who allegedly named Manning and other well-known athletes as recipients of HGH shipments that occurred during the time he worked at the Guyer Institute in 2011. The allegations in the documentary came while Sly spoke with British hurdler Liam Collins. Sly said in a YouTube video posted Saturday that his conversations with Al Jazeera were secretly recorded without his knowledge or consent. Al Jazeera met with him seven times over 12 days and recorded 27 hours of footage, according to Davies.
"He was consistent, he was calm, he was absolutely not badgered,'' she said. "In fact he was actually quite wary. Bit by bit, the information came out."
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