Bikie shootings, drugs in sport and often caught up in it is gym owner and cleanskin Tony Doherty
BIKIE shootings, drugs in sport ... and often caught up in it is gym owner and cleanskin Tony Doherty. | Bikie special
News
Don't miss out on the headlines from News. Followed categories will be added to My News.
GYM owner Tony Doherty is a man who doesn't discriminate. Much like courts, his gyms are among the few places where elite sportspeople rub shoulders with underworld figures, policemen - even judges.
Sometimes they are scenes of drama.
Bandidos sergeant-at-arms Toby Mitchell was talking to Doherty outside his Brunswick gym when he was shot several times in late 2011.
The Herald Sun has learned of links between Doherty's Gym and Shane Charter, the convicted drug trafficker linked to the scandal engulfing the AFL's Bombers.
It was at Doherty's Brunswick gym two decades ago that Charter is alleged have met a supplements supplier who would prove useful to Charter's drug-dealing ambitions.
Prosecution documents reveal a supplements supplier, then based in Brunswick, gave Charter the small plastic bottles he later filled with the pseudoephedrine tablets that saw him charged.
Biochemist Charter had told the supplier he intended to use the bottles to store "samples" he was developing.
Doherty last night said he did not know Charter. "He's not a member, and if he's come here it hasn't been for 15 years.
"People come from all walks of life and everyone leaves their hat at the door," he told the Herald Sun.
"Exercise is one of the best things for people, whatever their story."
Bikie laws a matter of urgency
Bikie enforcer Toby Mitchell survives another ambush
Melbourne gangland's biggest names gather at Danny Green fight
Former business partner accused of trafficking testosterone
Over time, Doherty's came to attract some police officers who have become household names - for all the wrong reasons.
The Herald Sun has learned that one detective who figures in a prominent anti-corruption probe, and who cannot be named for legal reasons, was known to train at Doherty's.
This officer allegedly had relationships with figures who were major players in the illicit drug-related turf war that gripped Melbourne's underworld until recently.
Doherty "categorically denies" that bent cops have ever been among members of his gym.
On Monday, the Herald Sun revealed that Sunbury police constable Dale Andrew Paterson had been stood down, pending a contested charge that last year he trafficked steroids with anti-ageing clinic operator Derek Bartolo - a former business associate of Shane Charter.
Further charges that Paterson disclosed information from a confidential police database have been dropped.
Members of the Bandidos are known to source vitamins from figures connected with the anti-ageing scene. And Bandidos bikie sergeant-at-arms and kickboxing champion Toby Mitchell is a long-time friend of Doherty.
The Bandidos' Melbourne chapter is next door to the Weston St gym, where the Finks also work out.
Doherty is not a bikie, but he loves bikes. He is a Harley-Davidson enthusiast and a Bandido supporter who has gone on rides with the gang.
But he says he has no formal affiliation with it.
Doherty was good friends with Sonny Schmidt, the late bodybuilding champion who was once jailed for conspiring to import cocaine for Tony Mokbel.
These days, Doherty runs five gyms around Victoria, four of which run 24 hours a day. For his part, Tony Doherty is an expert promoter and master networker.
Magistrates, police and business executives pump weights alongside criminals and bikies at his Brunswick gym.
AFL players are seen there regularly.
During the 1990s, Doherty was the weights coach for Carlton, and he has an affiliation with North Melbourne.
Doherty works with disabled children and uses his profile to promote the benefits of an active lifestyle.
Some big names to have worked out at his gym include Tiger Woods, Brendan Fevola and rapper Flo Rida.
In November, Doherty was photographed by the Herald Sun at a Danny Green fight talking with Mick Gatto.
Green is another Doherty's Gym regular.
Recently Doherty publicly stated he knew Stephen Dank - the sports scientist at the centre of the Essendon drugs mystery.
It is believed Doherty met Dank through football circles, and the pair have no business relationship.
In a YouTube video, Doherty explains how his school of hard knocks helped coach delisted Essendon player Kyle Reimers back to fitness.
"This kind of intensity is out of the textbooks - you won't find it anywhere else ... he's going to be a different athlete for the rest of his life after this," Doherty says.
The Bombers are the subject of three investigations into the supplements program that was run by Dank - who has denied any wrongdoing.
Reimers lifted the lid on the drugs in sport controversy, claiming that Essendon officials had admitted to players that its fitness program involved substances that were "borderline".
- With Anthony Dowsley and Padraic Murphy
