Peyton Manning denies shock claim linking him to performance-enhancing drugs

NFL superstar Peyton Manning has denied reports that link him to banned performance-enhancing drugs.

A new Al Jazeera documentary, “The Dark Side,” alleges that a pharmacist named Charlie Sly mailed human growth hormone—which is banned by the NFL—to Manning’s wife, Ashley, in 2011. Sly told an undercover Al Jazeera investigator that he did this so that Peyton Manning would not be linked to him by name.

Manning’s agents did not deny to Al Jazeera that Ashley Manning was sent HGH, but said it would be an invasion of her medical privacy to discuss the matter further.

After The Huffington Post first reported the allegations, Sly posted a video to YouTube recanting what he was filmed saying to Al Jazeera.

Manning also issued a statement, calling the allegations “garbage.”

Manning’s team, the Denver Broncos, stood by him in a statement on Sunday.

HuffPost, though, wrote that there were several factors which made the documentary’s claims credible:

First, Sly and the ring he is associated with do, in fact, obtain drugs for [undercover investigator Liam] Collins, which the network says it retained as evidence…Al Jazeera confirmed that Sly did work at the anti-aging clinic that treated Manning; it is difficult to imagine how Sly would have had knowledge of any arrangement to ship drugs to Manning’s wife if he were not operating with genuine insider knowledge.