Johnson remains defiant as ever

Toronto, July 10 (AFP): Disgraced sprinter Ben Johnson has claimed in an explosive new interview that “everybody” at the 1988 Seoul Olympics was on drugs — and he was the only athlete shamed because Canada did not protect him.

A defiant Johnson, now 42, returns for a CTV documentary to the Olympic Stadium where he scorched past Carl Lewis to win the 100 metres in a freakish 9.79 seconds — only to be vilified when he tested positive for steroids.

The film places his crime in the context of the times, when Soviet-bloc athletes were laced with performance enhancing drugs as the battles of the Cold War played out on sports fields.

And at a time of mounting 21st century doping scandals, the programme questions why Johnson was caught out and other suspected drug cheats got off.

“Everybody in Seoul was using drugs,” Johnson, said in the documentary. “I got caught because my country didn’t really protect me,” he added, implicitly suggesting that other nations knew their athletes were on steroids — but failed to root them out.

And Jamaican-born Johnson’s coach, Charlie Francis, attacked the idea that Johnson was stripped of his records and medals to ensure a “level playing field” for non-doping athletes.

“Steroids are so ubiquitous, so omnipresent and have been for decades,” he said.

“When you realise the true extent of it, then things are as they appear,” he said, in one chilling comment.

“There is a level playing field out there. It just isn’t the playing field you thought it was,” Francis said.

While Johnson’s and Francis’ claims have in the past been discounted as the self-serving comments of those who were caught out, history suggests they may be more valid than previously thought.

Four other athletes in the notorious 100 metres in Seoul later tested positive for some form of banned substances.

And athletics is shrouded deeper in doping scandals than ever before.

Current world 100m record holder Tim Montgomery and five other athletes fighting drug bans are currently competing in the United States Olympic trials.

Perhaps the most poignant moment of the CTV documentary, concerns athletes from former East Germany, force-fed steroids in the guise of vitamin pills by coaches and doctors.

East German shot-putter Heidi Krieger found her sexual orientation so changed by steroid treatments that she later in 1997 underwent a sex-change operation — and is now known as Andreas.

The documentary, “Ben Johnson: drugs and the quest for gold” also highlights how AFP first broke the story of Johnson’s disgrace to a disbelieving world, late on one hot Seoul night.

It also relates how Johnson and his coach still believe his doping sample was sabotaged.

Johnson has admitted years of steroid use, but has always denied using the specific substance for which he was stripped of his gold medal, stanozalol.

He now lives with his mother in Toronto, and works as a personal trainer with European footballers, including son of Libyan president Muammar Gadhafi.

While the film in no way exonerates the sprinter, it leaves viewers with a question... Why was he caught, and not others?

“Ben was stripped of every medal he ever won, ever record he ever set,” the documentary, narrated by Hollywood star Kieffer Sutherland asks.

But it points out that despite subsequent revelations about East German doping systems, medals and records of Eastern Bloc athletes were not taken away.

And the documentary ends in pathos, with a shot of Johnson alone in the vast empty, Seoul Olympic Stadium.

“At 42, there are not many more races to run ... He still believes he is the world’s fastest man.”