The day Ben Johnson was banished for good
MAR 5, 1993
SADLY, in recent years, we’ve become all too accustomed to stories of athletes being found guilty of taking drugs.
It’s become a sad fact that has eaten away at the sport’s very credibility in the eyes of the general public.
But it’s easy to look back to the point where athletics changed for ever.
It came in the 1988 Olympics in Seoul.
The whole world had watched Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson blow away his rivals in the men’s 100 metres final in a world record time of 9.79 seconds.
This was the coronation of Johnson as the king of his sport as he was already the Commonwealth champion and world champion.
But three days later, there was a palpable sense of shock when it was revealed Johnson had been stripped of his gold medal.
His post-race drugs test indicated the sprinter had taken performance-enhancing drugs.
The gold went to Johnson’s bitter rival, Carl Lewis, who’d been the Olympic champion four years earlier, and Great Britain’s Linford Christie moved up from bronze to silver. Johnson was a sporting pariah. His name was mud as he was associated with cheating on the highest scale. He’d ruined the blue ribbon event of the Olympics.
He initially denied the offence, but during an inquiry back in Canada, admitted he’d lied, and the inquiry was told Johnson had been using steroids since 1981.
Remarkably, the sprinter was only given a two-year ban, and resumed his athletics career in 1991.
He failed to make that year’s world championships, but the following summer, he qualified for the Olympics in Barcelona.
Four years after the disgrace in Seoul, he was back on the biggest stage. However, no one was sad to see him finish last in his semi-final.
But that didn’t stop him competing and, in January 1993, he was just 0.04 seconds away from the world record in the indoor 50m at a meeting in Grenoble.
However, he was again found guilty of cheating. This time, a post-race test in France found excessive levels of testosterone in his body.
There was no way back for Johnson now and, on March 5, he was handed a lifetime ban by the sport’s authorities.
In most people’s eyes, such a severe ban should have been handed out after his Seoul test.
Johnson always claimed that he had been made a scapegoat at the Olympics.
Subsequently, five of the other seven athletes in that men’s 100m final were found guilty of some kind of doping offence.
But the bad news is that drug problems in athletics have got worse, not better, since Johnson’s demise.
And in sprinting, only one man has ever set a world record quicker than Johnson’s time in that Olympic final and never failed a drugs test.
Thank goodness for the amazing Usain Bolt!
He initially denied the offence but later admitted he’d lied