The scroll across the bottom of my television screen read something to the effect of “NASCAR driver Ron Hornaday, Jr. tells ESPN the Magazine that he used testosterone and HGH.”
The only thing it didn’t say was, “cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater.”
The facts were there, after all. He bought a testosterone cream and human growth hormone from a suspect Florida laboratory in 2004 and 2005. Those drugs were shipped to his house in Mooresville, N.C.
And I immediately thought to myself, “Why would he need to do that?”
That was a question he answered at a news conference during the NASCAR weekend at New Hampshire. He said he had lost 40 pounds — and I do remember a thinner, almost gaunt mustachioed Hornaday from several years ago. He said he was treating the effects of Graves Disease, which had gone long undiagnosed, leaving him desperate to find a solution, which led him to the Palm Beach Rejuvenation Clinic.
Then, I recalled seeing him earlier this year at Lowe’s Motor Speedway, and he did look bigger, fitter, healthier. He also said that his wife, “a health nut,” ordered and used the HGH, a claim that she backed up.

Don’t get me wrong, driving in the Truck Series is a pretty good gig — beats working, as they say — but it is by no means some sort of stepping stone back to the Cup Series for guys like Hornaday. It is where old racers go to fade away.

NASCAR officials were there beside him along with team owner Kevin Harvick, who has been a vocal critic of NASCAR’s lackadaisical drug policies. No one there believed Hornaday did anything that should be punishable by NASCAR or by Harvick.
So, I immediately thought to myself, “Do I believe them?”
In 2004 and 2005, was he a man with an illness or a man clinging desperately to NASCAR’s last rung? Or both?
NASCAR officials did, refusing to penalize him and waiting to announce their reformulated drug policy, which will supposedly lend muscle to an outdated and toothless policy that is sort of in place — somewhere.
Follow-up articles have spoken with doctors, who say Hornaday could have received a competitive advantage from the use of the testosterone cream, calling the Palm Beach Rejuvenation Clinic nothing more than a drug pusher.
Given the steroid culture in professional sports and our frustration with it, it would be the easiest thing to make Hornaday NASCAR’s anti-drug poster boy — and in some ways that is what the ESPN the Magazine article wanted to do with a broad brush and a legitimate paper trail to Hornaday’s doorstep.
Critics called it an “ambush,” but it was the same type of 24/7, no-boundaries reporting other pro sports leagues are subject to.
The fact is, Hornaday, who turned 50 this past week, is not Barry Bonds.
Nor is he some light-hitting shortstop nicknamed “Slappy,” who is juicing in Toledo or Erie, trying desperately get back to and stick in the Major Leagues.
Don’t get me wrong, driving in the Truck Series is a pretty good gig — beats working, as they say — but it is by no means some sort of stepping stone back to the Cup Series for guys like Hornaday. It is where old racers go to fade away.
The youth movement in NASCAR’s Cup series has taken on the appearance if not the practice of ageism. The David Stremmes, Kyle Buschs and Joey Loganos of the game move in, while the Johnny Bensons, Hornadays and Mike Skinners move to the spacious if not greener pastures of the Truck Series.
None of them forgot how to drive a race car, they just forgot not to get old. No amount of testosterone cream (an alleged steroid) is going to change that as sponsors and the series itself repackages itself for Generation Y instead of Son of Baby Boomer.
No, without finding the Ponce de Leon-certified Fountain of Youth, Hornaday will end his career in a truck, not a race car.
And he knows it.
Did he become a better driver because of the drugs? If the drugs made him healthier, and a healthier Hornaday is a better driver, then yes.
I think that was the only scheme he had, and NASCAR — this time — made the right call.