The reporter behind al-Jazeera’s investigation into doping in sports that alleged an Indianapolis anti-aging clinic supplied Peyton Manning with human growth hormone (HGH) in 2011, defended her team’s report amid a barrage of rebuttals.

Deborah Davies, the reporter and narrator of al-Jazeera’s documentary, “The Dark Side,” spoke with The Denver Post, saying the report did not allege Manning took the hormone when he was a patient of the Guyer Institute during his recovery from four neck surgeries.

“The allegation in the program is that HGH is being sent out to Ashley Manning (his wife) in Florida,” Davies said. “What we are saying is that raises serious questions: How much was sent? What was the duration of those shipments? How much money was spent on it? And what was the purpose of the drug?”

Davies said including Peyton and Ashley Manning in a documentary about doping in sports — even though the former was not directly connected to HGH and the latter is not a professional athlete — was necessary.

“The program is about doping in sports,” Davies said. “One of the banned drugs is HGH. It’s banned in sport. It’s severely limited in terms of its legal prescription to any patient. So if you are told that shipments of a drug which is banned in sport and is illegal to prescribe to anyone who does not have a serious medical condition is being sent to the wife of one of the most famous football players in the country, it raises serious questions.”

Near the end of al-Jazeera’s documentary, Davies acknowledged the “insinuations” while introducing a statement by “Peyton Manning’s agent, ” who goes unnamed.

“In response to Charlie Sly’s claims,” Davies said in the documentary, “Peyton Manning’s agent said the insinuations being peddled are ‘baseless and absolutely false. Peyton Manning has never done what this person is suggesting.'”

Manning has said he was a patient of Dale Guyer in 2011 as part of his recovery from neck surgery but said he received only legal treatments: hyperbaric oxygen therapy, intravenous nutrients and enhanced external counterpulsation, or EECP, a nonsurgical treatment to increase blood flow — all of which was with the Indianapolis Colts’ consent.

The NFL added HGH to its list of banned substances in 1991, and the players and league agreed to test for it in 2011, when the collective bargaining agreement was ratified. Testing was not implemented until 2014.

Sly — licensed as a pharmacy intern in Indiana from April 27, 2010 to May 1, 2013, according to state records — was filmed undercover in the documentary saying The Guyer Institute sent shipments of HGH to Ashley. When asked if Sly was the only source with regards to the allegations against the Mannings, Davies said al-Jazeera “would not put anything in the program if it had not gone through a very rigorous editorial and legal process to be able to substantiate what is in the program.”

She said her team did not have shipping receipts from the clinic to verify Sly’s claims.

“Well, that’s something a federal investigation would have to find, isn’t it?” Davies said. “That’s not something a journalist could find. You need to have access to the clinic’s shipping records. You need to have access to their purchase records, their wholesale purchase of HGH. You need to have access to patient records. That is all stuff that a federal investigation can do, not a journalist.”

Al-Jazeera published Monday the recording of Davies’ call to the clinic to attempt to verify Sly’s employment history. A woman named “Heather” answered and told Davies that Sly began work Oct. 17, 2011, and stayed, “I think for a couple months. Like three months, maybe.”

Davies said “Heather” was the clinic’s director of patient services and that “she was the person I was put through to go and check records.” Davies said the phone call, her team believed, sufficed as proof of Sly’s work history with the institute.

“I would have thought that was pretty good proof, wouldn’t you?” Davies said.

Nicki Jhabvala: njhabvala@denverpost.com or @NickiJhabvala