Australia’s triple world kayaking champion, Nathan Baggaley says that his 2005 steroid suspension from the sport led him to deal in drugs. He now awaits sentencing in Lismore District Court after he pleads guilty for distributing and selling 1509 ecstasy tablets in late 2007. His lawyer John Weller said that the dual Olympian had not recovered much after the ban in 2005 for his steroid use. “From becoming a world champion, becoming an award winner…he’d done nothing else,” the lawyer said. “Suddenly his world was gone and he didn’t address the issues.”

He and his younger brother Dru Baggaley, have spent more than 18 years behind bars following their arrest as a result of a covert cross-boarder operation targeting the supply of ecstasy on NSW’s north coast. The police operation has seized at least 13,500 pills, $62, 520 of drug money and a quantity of powder that can produce more than 160,000 tablets. The police also found an industrial pill press at Nathan Baggaley’s Byron Bay Home.

Col McPherson, the Crown prosecutor told the Lismore District Court that similar supply and manufacture charges warranted the Olympians’ penalty of up to 55 years or a minimum 10 years in prison. He is also facing a total of three charges, with the most serious being the supply of a commercial quantity of ecstasy, or 1000 pills. “The charge is graver,” McPherson said, noting that it carried a maximum sentence of 20 years. The remaining two charges relate to the manufacture and supply of 509 tablets.

It can be recalled that Baggaley, who won two silver medals in the 2004 Athens Games, was banned for two years after his drug test shows positive for steroid use. Baggaley, from Byron Bay on the northern New South Wales coast, tested positive in September 2005. He justified that he ingested the drugs mistakenly when he drank from a bottle of orange juice from a shared fridge. Baggaley tested positive for two steroids, stanozolol and methindione. He was subsequently banned for 15 months by the Australian Canoe Federation. His suspension was then extended to two years by the International Canoe Federation, and was even barred from competing at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 because of the pending criminal charges.

Weller said that his client was a minor player in a cross-border police drug operation, having “stepped into the shoes” of his brother. His brother, 27, was sentenced in the same court to a minimum of eight years in jail for the manufacture and supply of the same drug. Baggaley admitted to “helping out” with drug deals while his younger brother was out of town. He is facing up to 55 years in prison over the three charges. With time already served, Baggaley will be eligible for parole on Nov. 20, 2012.

“It’s been a hard comedown from being a world champion, a revered person in his home town, internationally and nationally, to someone who has been completely vilified,” Weller said. The sentencing hearing continues before Judge James Black.

Baggaley also won gold medals in the K1 class at the world championships in 2002, 2003, and 2005.

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