The infamous race that has yet to run its course
THE 1988 Olympic Games hosted what has been described as the dirtiest race of all time, by others as the greatest. That race, the final of the men’s 100 metres is the most infamous in the history of athletics and etched into the consciousness of the sport.
Can it be 24 years since Ben Johnson rocked the sporting world twice in three days — first, with a jet-propelled 9.79-second sprint, and then by testing positive for Stanozolol and being stripped of the title?
Richard Moore’s painstakingly-researched account of that watershed moment in sport reminds of the clear and present dangers of performance-enhancing drugs and their legacies.
These legacies affect more than the perpetrators of such soulless acts. The victims, Moore argues, are the fans who pay to watch fabricated acts of sporting “excellence” and the kids who want to be Olympians — who base their dreams on artificially enhanced machines.
Before Seoul, the world couldn’t get enough of Ben Johnson. He drove a Maserati, trained hard, partied harder and lived a life of which others could only dream.
What Johnson did for the sport, and for Canadians, who hadn’t any real global superstar prior to him, was immeasurable ... but then his world, and theirs, came crashing down.
Carl Lewis transcended track-and-field in the States, and when the popularity of athletics waned in the early part of the 1980s, he made it look sexy on his own, swelled club memberships across the country, and inspired a generation with his feats.
Moore says Johnson’s and Lewis’s duel in Seoul “was the Olympics’ answer to Ali-Frazier III, to Nicklaus and Palmer in the 1967 US Open, to Borg and McEnroe in the 1981 Wimbledon final”.
Moore is an accomplished gatherer of details. Having written six books on cycling, his debut in the world of athletics writing is impressive. The book is broken down into three sub-sections; Part One is one-third of the book and dedicated to documenting the contrasting early lives of ‘Carl and Ben’, followed by a middle third (‘Part II-Rivals’) outlining how their relationship deteriorated and how their rivalry intensified throughout the mid-’80s, and, finally the book concludes with Part III, titled ‘Seoul’, where the minutiae of those unforgettable Games is studied in vivid detail.
Johnson has contributed to this book and, while admitting the use of drugs at different stages of his career, vehemently defends himself against the presence of Stanozolol in his system at the 1988 Games, with the finger being pointed at a Lewis acolyte who was passing ‘Big Ben’ cans of beer in the doping-control room in those easier-access testing days.
Lewis is far from the saviour, and the “all-American altar boy” image attached to him, even to this day, is investigated by Moore.
Is Lewis’s clean-cut image a myth, Moore asks? After all, Lewis failed a drugs test in the months leading up to those Games, and, had the US officials been more stringent, he would not have been on the starting line at Seoul.
The book is as much about Johnson and Lewis, and Seoul, as it is about the environment that spawned their rivalry and Moore takes an objective stance. He paints a picture of two flawed geniuses, from the times their talents became obvious and colleges engaged in bidding wars for their enrolment; of greedy coaches fighting to get them in their own stables; of spiritual gurus like Brian Farnum, who told Johnson he was the Egyptian pharaoh Cheops, builder of the Great Pyramid. Lewis, on the other hand, was “part of the dynasty that fought Cheops for the leadership, 4,500 years ago.”
Both were vulnerable and Moore affords them pity; he portrays them as two objects who were deliberately developed incongruously to hate each other. The maelstrom they created wherever they went swelled audiences and made both men very rich. But it came at a heavy cost.
Many of the characters at the heart of the drama have since died, including Johnson’s coach Charlie Francis, all the members of the doping panel, and IAAF president Primo Nebiolo, but not the mystery man with the Budweisers. He has gone on to become an African-based diamond entrepreneur and offers no admission or denial of his role in the most famous dope test of all time.
“Of course, I can say I didn’t (sabotage the test),” says Jackson. “But I can also say I did too, what’s the benefit?”
The ‘where are they now’ section of the book concludes that just two of the eight finalists from one of track-and-field’s darkest days went through their careers untainted by drugs: Calvin Smith (whose son, of the same name, was a semi-finalist at 400m in the recent US Olympic trials) and Robson da Silva, of Brazil.
After Seoul, every single sporting event was scrutinised to the nth degree. Overwhelming results in major events suspended belief. World records were indigestible and invited suspicion, and Moore eludes to Usain Bolt’s winning time of 9.58 in Beijing, four years ago, as evidence of that. The tragedy, as in Seoul, was not that Johnson did get caught, but the number of people who did not.
“In Seoul, even the sceptics in the press seat were thrilled by what they witnessed ... in Beijing, the questions and raised eyebrows followed inevitably as the world record. Celebrations were checked before they might be premature. It is the legacy of Seoul. A race may not be decided by the finishing line, but in the laboratory.”
There is no real redemption for either of the main players in the years that followed.
Lewis continues to cast about for a role in sport and life. Johnson failed drugs test twice more and now coaches young athletes in Toronto. He lives on his own, and though he has a daughter and a granddaughter, many of his entourage who helped him pick his way to the summit have now either died or have deserted him.
When interviewed by Moore in April last year, Johnson offered an insight into the loneliness he now experiences, “in the back of my mind there’s this sadness ... like Christmas time, when everybody’s on holidays with their families and other stuff, it really hits, you know?”
The enmity continues.
Before I read the book, I thought I knew all there was to know about those games, but not only had my perceptions of the main protagonists changed from one of anger to one of pity, it closed the gap between perception and reality.
Lewis and Johnson were two actors in one of sport’s most phenomenal soap operas and their lives irreparably changed because of it. If you thought you knew the ‘real’ outcome of that race, think again.
Containing stunning new revelations and new sources, the book is a real page turner and a must for anyone with just the mildest interest in sport.
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