How many of you remember the Ben Johnson doping scandal?

Question

It happened in the 1988 Olympics.

Answer 1

I do. That was over a decade ago, but I still remember it like it was yesterday.

Answer 2

I remember the Ben Johnson fiasco. No one seemed too concerned that a skinny kid bulked up and started breaking records left and right. Up until the doping scandal, Ben was the pride of Canada (CA-NA-DA! CA-NA-DA!). When the sh*t hit the fan, suddenly Big Ben was "just a Jamaican immigrant on 'roids".

Answer 3

Yes I still remember a muscular figure,Ben Johnson finishing the race with a raised hand and two fingers aloft.I think he clocked 9,.83 secs

Answer 4

every Canadian track athlete knew Mazda team was on "roids", and knew he couldn't keep beating the Americans and taking all that Grand prix money for too much longer. I still think that race was the best 100m race ever,that 100m race was so stacked with "roiders", he just happened to be the one who got caught.
Can you imagine if he was around now and on the advanced the good "roids" available now, the shoes, the track surfaces, a full run through the line.Wow forget 9.76 World record, can you say 9.72 or lower

Answer 5

I do not remember it first-hand as I wasn't born then, but as an avid T&F fan I am all-too familiar with the story and what happened in that scandal

Johnson's 9.79, despite being filled with roids, was done with a slight ease-off & celebration in the final 5m of the race. Without it he would've run 9.76 - if he was around today and had benefited from the slightly faster track surfaces, etc. he would've been in the 9.72-9.75 range - a Prime Maurice Greene would've dusted him though, especially in his 2001 form

Answer 6

At the 1987 World Championships, in Rome, Johnson gained instant world fame when he beat Lewis for the title, setting a new world record of 9.83 seconds as well.

Johnson and Lewis were also the favourites for the 1988 Olympic title. On September 24, Johnson beat Lewis in the final, clocking a new world record of 9.79 seconds. Johnson would later remark that he would have been even faster had he not raised his hand in the air just before he finished the race. However, Johnson's urine samples were found to contain steroids (namely stanozolol), and he was disqualified three days later.

He later admitted having used steroids when he ran his 1987 world record, which caused the IAAF to delete that record from the books as well. But Johnson and hundreds of other athletes have long complained that they used doping in order to remain on an equal footing with the other top athletes on drugs they had to compete against.

His claim bears some weight in light of the revelations since 1988. Including Johnson, four of the top five finishers of the 100-meter race have all tested positive for banned drugs at one point or another. They are Carl Lewis, who was given the gold medal, along with Linford Christie who was moved up to the silver medal, and Dennis Mitchell. Of these, only Johnson was forced to give up his records and his medals, although he was the only one of the four who tested positive or admitted using drugs during a medal-winning performance. Later, Christie was caught using steroids and banned, although it has to be said that he was found to have metabolites of nandrolone in his urine which has been shown to be able to be produced by taking legal nutritional supplements that may erroneously contain metabolites of nandrolone (Tseng YL, Kuo FH and Sun KH, 2005) and hence may have been accidental as in numerous other doping cases relating to nandrolone. According to documents released in 2003 by a former senior US anti-doping official, Dr. Wade Exum, Lewis and two of his training partners all took the same three types of banned stimulants (ones found in over-the-counter cold medicine), and were caught at the 1988 US Olympic trials, which is the competition used to select the US athletes that will compete in the Olympics.

Johnson's coach, Charlie Francis, a vocal critic of the IOC testing procedures, is the author of Speed Trap, which features Johnson heavily. In the book he freely admits that his athletes were taking anabolic steroids, as all top athletes are, but also shows why Ben Johnson could not possibly have tested positive for that particular steroid.

Johnson also briefly acted as trainer for Argentine soccer legend Diego Armando Maradona in 1987; Maradona would later be suspended from the game for cocaine abuse.:-)

Answer 7

I remember it as if it happened yesterday. Ben was my idol, I never believed the doping allegations. For years I kept saying, they will soon reveal his innocence in a press conference but alas, he confessed and my hero crashed.

Answer 8

It's a real shame about Ben. I recall he had an awesome musculature.

Answer 9

Yes I remember, Such a wonderful athlete, such a beautiful man, such a promising career,such a bad decision, so very sad....

Answer 10

I do and I wonder why no one question why american trained sprinters are so much bulkier then their competitors