THE INFAMY AND THE CHAMPS
Reporter shares Olympic memories
Take a step behind the scenes as we highlight some memorable coverage from the Ottawa Citizen’s storied past. Martin Cleary, who covered the Ben Johnson doping scandal at the Seoul Summer Olympics, recounts what it was like to be there when the story overtook shining moments at the Games, and shares memories from other Olympics.
The hype preceding the now-infamous Ben Johnson-Carl Lewis 100-metre showdown at the 1988 Seoul Summer Olympic Games was incredible. And so was the crushing emotion afterwards. It’s one of the most poignant episodes I can recall in four decades covering the Olympics.
Today, it’s hard to describe the euphoria Canadians felt as Johnson stormed to victory over defending champion and American rival Lewis in a world- and Olympic-record 9.79 seconds. The anticipation had been huge.
But after the race ended, I turned to Toronto Star reporter Randy Starkman, who, like me, was covering the Games for his newspaper, and said: “Ben’s race isn’t over until that drug test comes back.” Randy readily agreed; sportswriters in Toronto knew something was amiss, but couldn’t prove Johnson was being fuelled with performanceenhancing drugs.
But he was. It would be Canada’s heartbreak Olympics, and Johnson’s larger-than-life failure would overshadow the performances of many fine athletes from his own country.
We didn’t know that, of course, in the immediate aftermath. As fast as Johnson zipped down the track, I felt like I had to be just as swift pounding out the story, since his Saturday high-noon race corresponded to our late Friday-night deadline at the Citizen. There was no internet and no cellphone in 1988. I crafted the story on a Radio Shack Tandy TRS -80 computer, which had limited storage, couplers to hook it up to a landline phone, and a five-minute, hold-your-breath wait as the story travelled, line by line, through the wires from Seoul to New York City to Toronto to Ottawa. I made deadline.
But two days after Johnson’s run to glory, his golden empire of records, endorsements and fame crashed, as Canadian chef de mission Carol Anne Letheren asked him to return his gold medal to her in the early morning darkness. Several hours later, the International Olympic Committee announced Johnson had tested positive for the banned steroid Stanozolol. As his life was crumbling, he phoned his mother, who had always been the rock in his life, and told her not to worry.
This wasn’t the Johnson I had talked to while we sat on the infield of the Terry Fox Athletic Facility waiting for the start of the Canadian track and field championships a few years earlier. Then, drugs seemed so out of character for the shy young man with a slight stutter. In 1983, he was a Canadian sprinter on a slow rise, placing 12th at the world championships and fourth at the Pan Am Games.
But by the time Johnson reached the Seoul Olympics, he was a superstar with a chiselled body right out of a superhero comic book. He had big sponsorship contracts and sleek sports cars in his driveway. It was as if his coach, Charlie Francis, had built the ultimate sprinter in a lab. But as well as providing technical coaching, Francis had used some cloudy logic to convince Johnson to go the steroids route — because it’s not cheating if others are doing it too.
In the end, Johnson accepted full responsibility for his actions and even served as a pallbearer at Francis’s funeral in 2010. The Dubin Inquiry, which was sparked by Johnson’s positive test and which dug up the ugly truth about Canadian sprinting success through steroids, told Canadians that Ben Johnson had been on a doping program from 1981 through 1988.
The discovery of Johnson’s steroid use in Seoul was a sad day for Canadian sport, and for this sports writer. Johnson’s deception seemed to undermine the performances of his Canadian teammates. Many felt his actions had stolen their wellearned spotlight. Does anyone remember Lawrence Lemieux, a sailor who abandoned his chance to win a silver medal in the Finn class to rescue an injured competitor who’d fallen overboard, or the double gold won by synchronized swimmer Carolyn Waldo?
I covered several Olympics for the Citizen, each very different from the others.
On the day of the first-ever men’s triathlon at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, I arrived in the press room three hours before the start of the race. I knew I would be writing against a tight deadline and everything had to be in place, including some advance writing to stimulate the creative juices.
This was Simon Whitfield’s race, and he took the gold medal, to the delight of fans across the country.
After waiting for a five-minute interview with the victor in the media mixed zone, I dashed back to my desk — and hammered out 1,500 words in 50 minutes. It’s amazing how you can shut off everything to turn ideas into sentences, paragraphs and eventually a page-one story when the clock is ticking.
At one point, I walked around the New South Wales Tennis Centre and watched part of the American team’s practice session. Serena Williams, who was two days into being a 19-year-old and poised to rocket into tennis prominence, was training with a male player. She was hitting tennis balls with such power and accuracy I was convinced one of them would burst. Williams then joined sister Venus, and the unseeded team easily won the women’s doubles.
But I should tell you about my very first Olympics, in 1976, when I was still a rookie in the Citizen’s sports department.
My travels took me south to Kingston, Ont., rather than east to Montreal, the main site of Canada’s first Summer Games.
I was in Kingston to cover yachting. I figured that to do this properly, you’ve got to see the races live, not just from the press room. It was a good idea that went bad.
After being out on the water for 90 minutes, which included a boxed lunch, this landlubber, born and raised in Toronto, started to feel sick. Someone on the boat told me to go into the cabin and I would feel better. That was a mistake. I later learned I should have stayed outside and stared at the horizon.
To make matters worse, the winds were blowing strong on the course, and the International Yacht Racing Union officials decided to extend the race by another two legs. By the time I got back to shore, I could barely walk. For more than an hour, my legs felt like jelly.
After 10 consecutive days covering the yachting in Kingston (thank goodness for the press room), I was exhausted. I even mentioned it during a health checkup I was having before an eye examination.
That medical visit led to an invitation to a party so I could meet someone who worked in the Olympic yachting media centre. We met and chatted, but I spent the majority of the night talking to another woman I met there — who would later become my wife of almost 39 years.
So you can see why I love the Olympics.
Martin Cleary’s career as a sports journalist has spanned more than 45 years with The Ottawa Citizen and continues with the biweekly High Achievers column about amateur sports in Ottawa. His assignments have taken him to six Winter and Summer Olympics, and five World Figure Skating Championships.