Field Notes
An inside peek at peak performance.
“A GOLD MEDAL – that’s something no one can take away from you.”
Those were the immortal words of Ben Johnson, the Canadian sprinter who won the 100m event at the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games. Despite a starting eight that boasted, arguably, the best group of sprinters ever assembled (it included reigning Olympic champion Carl Lewis, Calvin Smith and Linford Christie – the last of whom went on to claim gold in the event four years later) Johnson simply blew away the field.
His time of 9.79 seconds was a new world record, breaking his own, and it was hailed as one of the greatest races in Olympic history. Johnson’s performance was touted as one of the seminal moments in track and field. This was an athlete at the peak of his powers, and none of the other runners could live with him.
The problem was, as history revealed, that not only could his gold medal be taken away from him, but it was, only a couple of days later, and in conspicuous ignominy. Johnson failed a drugs test, was disqualified, had to hand his medal back, and returned to his adopted homeland (he moved to Canada from Jamaica as a 15-year-old) in disgrace.
It should have been the start of something; a point in sporting history at which the authorities woke up to the fact that doping was rife and did something about it. And they did; setting up the World Anti-Doping Agency a mere 11 years later. These things take time, apparently.
Ben Johnson was caught red-handed and suffered the consequences. To this day he maintains that he hadn’t done anything that his fellow athletes were not doing, and it’s interesting to note that of that stellar field in 1988, six out of the eight (including the squeaky-clean-imaged Carl Lewis) were sanctioned for drug use at some point in their careers.
Johnson may have been right, and may even have had a point, but that’s not the point. He cheated. The fact that other people also cheated is irrelevant because he knew what was doing and was fully cognisant of the fact that he was gaining an unfair advantage due to his use of illicit substances – in this case, stanozolol (an androgen and anabolic steroid). Incidentally, this particular drug is harmful to the liver and can cause liver cancer. It’s unlikely Johnson would have been aware of this, but he may have been. Whatever he knew about the potential medical ramifications, he was still prepared to do anything and everything it took to peak at the kind of performance levels that saw him win an Olympic gold medal and break a world record.
While Johnson’s misdeeds in 1988 were a shocker, they really shouldn’t have been. A mere 12 years earlier, East Germany garnered 40 pieces of gold at the Montreal Olympics, doubling their tally from 1972. Now that’s progress. The athletes who took to the field, pool, weightlifting arena and rowing lake in 1976 had an air of superiority and invincibility that intimidated their opponents from the first moment they clapped eyes on them. They were lean, mean, toned, honed, competitive athletic machines, with never-seen-before musculature and sense of destiny in their eyes.
They looked unbeatable, and mostly they were, but a lot of it was down to a systematic, highly regulated, governmentsponsored (and secret police-overseen) regimen of doping. East Germany’s athletes were, more or less, force-fed anabolic
steroids and testosterone during their ‘training programmes’ – regardless of sexual orientation – and the performances that were put in scaled the heretofore attained peaks, and then exceeded them by an uncomfortably noticeable margin.
At the time, it was part of an effort on behalf of the communists in Europe to prove that they held sway in everything, and that the craven, ineffectual west (that is, those espousing democracy) was second best or worse. It worked, for a time, but many were suspicious, and rightly so. They cheated. The whole world now knows it, as they do with Ben Johnson, as do most of those East German athletes – those who are still alive and haven’t succumbed to a variety of attendant illnesses caused by the ingestion of harmful substances. There are quite a few strange-looking people out there whose physiology had been tampered with, whether voluntarily or otherwise, who may attest to the joy at reaching the peak of sporting endeavour, but didn’t realise the consequences, and didn’t question the morality.
Marion Jones, Lance Armstrong, Barry Bonds, Justin Gatlin, Alex Rodriguez, Floyd Landis, Tyson Gay, Maria Sharapova, Diego Maradona, Shane Warne. These are all topnotch, superstar, best-in-their-field sportsmen and women who have achieved excellence in their chosen professions. They’re all remarkable. They’re all super-talented human beings who dedicated their lives to being the best at what they did. They all cheated.
The question, however, that links all of these people and taps into a minefield of philosophical argument is, what’s the point? How much satisfaction can possibly be derived from winning by cheating? You’ve been proclaimed as the ‘best in the world’ but you know you have only received the accolade because you’ve been administered banned, performanceenhancing drugs. Does it matter?
Unlike the East German athletes of the 1970s and 1980s who were not given much of a choice – it was either get with the programme or queue for potatoes like everyone else – subsequently, high-performance individuals chose the doping pathway to sporting immortality, and, presumably, hoped that they would never get caught. The prize was the prize and nothing else mattered.
But how did they feel at the end of the day, knowing that they had cheated in their efforts to achieve sporting perfection and peak performance? Did they do it for national pride, in the hope of becoming an icon and a symbol of excellence? Was the expectation placed on their shoulders to succeed in their chosen field too much to bear? Was the money in endorsements and sponsorship for the world’s best simply too much to turn down, even if it meant cutting one or two corners when it came to legality?
There are many questions, and the answers, unfortunately, are uncomfortable ones. We live in an age in which appearances and achievements and assumed accomplishments mean more than anything else. More often than not, we’re not interested in the background and what was required to get to the positions that we laud and admire. It’s as true in the business world as it is in the world of sports. None of us cares where things come from or how they are constructed if it means that we can make money. And Ben Johnson did what he did back in 1988 because he knew that it would set him up for life, financially.
He cheated and he knew it. The peak performance of his life – never to be repeated, by the way, which hardly needs stating – was based on a lie. He was doped up. As were many in our aforementioned hall of infamy. I’m sure we would all enjoy sitting with them and asking them whether ‘cheats never prosper’ was ever a part of the legend that helped to map their moral compasses, but I’m not sure that any of us are going to like the answers.
None of us cares where things come from or how they are constructed if it means that we can make money.