
The Dark Side
Doping in professional sports gets an undercover treatment from Al Jazeera's investigative unit, built around Liam Collins, a world championship runner who poses as a buyer and wears a hidden camera into the trade. His trail leads to the Bahamas, where licensed pharmacist Chad Robertson offers banned substances and claims they turn ordinary athletes into stars, dropping the name of NFL quarterback Peyton Manning as a supposed client, a claim the film presents without confirming. The camera also follows Tim Montgomery, once declared the world's fastest man before his doping conviction ended that title, now coaching young athletes and warning them off the substances that ended his career. Between these threads the film maps the underground supply chain, from the chemists refining drugs to beat current tests to the loose regulatory net meant to catch them. It stays close to its two central figures, the undercover runner and the disgraced one, letting their accounts carry the case rather than expert commentary.