Athletes have used performance enhancing drugs to set world records in dozens of sports. In 2009, one young American weightlifter sought to achieve the same. Pat Mendes’ journey would see him win three national titles, compete internationally for two countries and appear on the world stage aside the titans of the sport. His career ended due to a pair of faulty anti-doping tests—one proven in court to be totally unreliable. To this day, Pat is the only American to snatch 200kg. He trained harder and lifted more weight than all but a few American weightlifters in history. But his short time spent on drugs was not enough to defeat the superstars of the state-sponsored doping systems and the bribery and corruption of the federations that protected them.