By the time he reached Seoul for last summer`s Olympics, Ben Johnson was dog-paddling in a cesspool of steroids. He was accompanied by his coach, Charlie Francis, and his physician, Dr. Jamie Astaphan, who also were neck deep in that bilge and proving to be more of an enemy than an entourage.
For instance, Johnson testified last week, Astaphan demanded that Johnson get a room at the Seoul Hilton for the doctor and his wife. Johnson did, not only for those two but also for Astaphan`s agent and his wife, and for Astaphan`s mom and some of his sisters. The tab came to $27,000.
And how did Astaphan act after Johnson took care of those arrangements for him? ”He came back normal,” said Johnson, ”like a nice guy.”
But Johnson`s testimony in Toronto at a Canadian commission`s inquiry into drug use in sports revealed that what is considered normal in the not-so- amateur world of track and field is anything but nice.
The Latin word for lover, amator, is the root of ”amateur.” But during his two days on the stand, Johnson hardly proved to be someone who felt that way toward his sport.
He may have way back in his native Jamaica, back when he raced across verdant soccer fields with his boyhood friends. But from the time he popped his first pill, in the fall of 1981, he was something different. He was a cheat, and by the time he was stripped of his 100-meter gold medal last September in Seoul, he was little more than a pharmaceutically created, highly marketable commodity.
When that cycle began, he testified, he was still a teenager and not aware that Francis was feeding him banned anabolic steroids. That may indeed have been true. But when he was preparing for Seoul, others have testified, he was knowledgeable enough to fill syringes and prepare them for injection.
Before his testimony began, it has been widely reported, the 27-year-old Johnson had been given IQ tests that reportedly showed he had the mental capacity of a 9-year-old. That was expected to be used last week as part of an ignorance-is-innocence defense. But not even his own attorney, Ed Futerman, brought that up or attempted that ploy in the face of the evidence mounted against Johnson.
That evidence, from others and from Johnson himself, revealed that he began taking steroids in the fall of 1981, that he understood he was taking steroids at the drug-ravaged 1983 Pan American Games and that he knew they were banned.
It revealed that he continued taking steroids even after he acquired this knowledge, that he took steroids six weeks before his world-record run at the 1987 track and field championships in Rome and that he took steroids 27 days before the 100-meter final in Seoul. It revealed, in fact, that he had steroid cycles each fall (while training for the indoor season), each March (while training for the first part of the outdoor season) and each June (while training for lucrative late-summer European meets).
It also revealed that:
– Johnson received no more than $100 a meet when he started racing internationally, but last summer, in the months before Seoul, he was raking in at least $30,000 for each appearance.
– He was a millionaire who, according to one Toronto paper, made a tidy $488,000 in April of 1988 alone.
– He began paying Astaphan-the primary provider of his drugs, a physician who bragged in his testimony of a ”brotherhood of the needle”-a monthly salary of $10,000 the summer before Seoul.
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– After Seoul, Johnson was driving a car worth at least $100,000 and that the forfeiture of his gold medal endangered endorsement deals worth at least $15 million.
– Before Seoul, he started thinking of himself as a meal ticket for his less talented teammates.
Here is how he recalled his situation in May, 1988, when he was tired, injured and debating whether to join Astaphan in St. Kitts or Francis and some of those teammates at a training camp in Spain:
”At the time, there was a lot of pressure on me. Charlie calls me two, three times a day, says I have to be there . . . some big commitments had been made, and he wants me there.”
Johnson also recalled his situation last June, when, most tellingly, he broke off his training for quick trips to Italy and Finland to fulfill endorsement obligations.
And, finally, he recalled a conversation in late June with Jack Scott, an American masseur who had flown to St. Kitts to treat Johnson`s injured leg.
”I told him I didn`t like the whole idea with Charlie and Jamie and everybody, and that after the Olympic Games I was going to forget everybody.” Because of the drugs? he was asked pointedly.
”No,” Johnson answered. ”It was the way I was being treated. I don`t mind helping other athletes make money, but I was in too deep.”
When he finished his sordid little tale, Ben Johnson shed some tears, admitted that he felt ashamed, apologized for lying to so many for so long, and, under prompting from Futerman, said: ”I want to tell (kids to) be honest. Don`t take drugs.”
He also expressed support for the commission and for clean competition, and told of his desire to compete again in the 1992 Games, in Barcelona, Spain. ”For my country, Canada,” he said when asked whom he`d like to represent.
But Canada, the country he shamed, has hit him with a lifetime suspension, and after hearing his admission of longtime drug use, the International Amateur Athletic Federation, the world governing body of track and field, seems certain to reconsider the two-year ban it slapped on him.
”There are, around the world, arguments for increasing that penalty from between four and five years up to a lifetime,” said Dr. Arne Ljungqvist, chairman of the IAAF`s medical committee. ”And those hard-liners are seemingly gaining increased support.”
”He was competing not with the body he was born with, but with the body the pharmacologist had created for him,” added British Olympic Committee chairman Sir Arthur Gold. ”That will always give him an advantage over an athlete who has built up his body with his own effort and training, and that advantage will last the rest of his competitive life. He can never compete on fair and equal terms again.”
There also is swelling support to strip Johnson of the world record he set in Rome, but none of this, not even that base story he helped write, has left him without supporters. Some of them applauded him when he concluded his testimony last week, and then there was this scene outside the commission building.
Young boys and girls, still in their school uniforms, were lined up behind ropes, clutching sheets of paper they hoped Ben Johnson would autograph. When they saw him in the distance, getting off an elevator, they started applauding. And as he moved swiftly past them and ignored their papers, they screamed, ”We still love ya, Ben! We still love ya!”
It would be better if they remember what he did when he returned home from Seoul in disgrace. He grabbed a bottle of steroids off a shelf in his home, smashed it against a wall and threw it in the garbage.
It would be better, too, if they remember the words of Gold, who said after hearing Johnson`s testimony: ”Don`t waste too many tears on Ben Johnson. He has already achieved considerable wealth from sponsorship deals, from money obtained under false pretenses. He has already benefited hugely from ill-gotten gains.”