While other athletes made headlines for their off-the-field issues, NASCAR’s athletes have been heralded as being clean and well behaved. In the past decade, as performance-enhancing drugs have dominated the headlines of the NFL and MLB, NASCAR was able to stay clear of the cloud of suspicion. It lived in an optimistic world separate of its negative stick-and-ball counterparts.

Until now. Performance-enhancing drugs have officially arrived in NASCAR.

Ron Hornaday, Jr., in an interview with ESPN The Magazine, admitted to taking testosterone and receiving shipments from the now-infamous Palm Beach Rejuvenation Center. The facility, along with Signature Pharmacy, was raided in 2007 by authorities, and sports stars like Rick Ankiel, Troy Glaus, and Paul Byrd were outed during the investigation. Not only did Hornaday admit the use, he even produced the items to the author. It wasn’t the fact that Hornaday admitted the crime; it was the usual shuck-and-jive that comes with the revelation.

According to Hornaday, he started experiencing health problems in 2004, losing “38 pounds, and no doctor could tell me what was wrong." So a friend of his told him to consult with the Rejuvenation Center. The exam consisted of a blood sample sent to them, and the clinic had a prescription sent back…the next day. Hornaday received a tube of testosterone, which he originally said he used for only a week, but later just happened to remember he wound up using it for thirteen months. Also, six shipments of HGH were sent to Hornaday’s house, which they claim were all for his wife. Both said they got nothing out of it, so they stopped. Hornaday was later diagnosed with a thyroid problem in 2006, but only after this entire time period.

It’s that kind of weird story that is common in the caught-doing-steroids defense. The kind of story that sounds so outlandish you think of a three-year old trying to convince you it wasn’t them that filled the VCR with Cheerios. The strange rationalization that it was to fight an unknown illness, with a prescription filled by a doctor you’ve never seen or heard from, and written after only one day. The usual claim that the drugs were for someone else, this time his wife, but with no real explanation why. The whole story creates more questions than it give answers. Why use a product without an actual doctor’s opinion? And if nothing happened out of a year’s use, why keep using it? And if you didn’t think it was illegal, why hide it from NASCAR?

Now the NASCAR world must ask, “Where do we go from here?” The unfortunate answer is that we must now forget about the three championships, all those wins, forgotten. All the achievements, although mostly before these transgressions took place, no longer relevant. Ron Hornaday must wear the label of “cheater” for the rest of his career, and maybe even his life. If he indeed violated NASCAR’s policy, he should bear that punishment, but it won’t be as scarring as everyone knowing the shady way he tried to gain an advantage.

This wasn’t cheating as race fans know it; it was not “creative engineering.” This goes way beyond sterno in the manifold. It was gaining an advantage through completely illegal means. And it was done not in 1998 when SportsCenter was about highlights and sportswriters just wanted the free meal from the press box. It was 2004, and steroids were already a cardinal sin of the sports world, a reason for the media to go to war against someone. The second Hornaday contacted the clinic, he should’ve known what he was doing, and what it could do to his career or even his life.