I did something good in life. My father and mother saw me run faster than any other human being. That’s better than a gold medal
Ben Johnson
———————————
Before Ben Johnson (61), the cheaters were the others.
The others: those who lived on the other side of the iron curtain. Westerners were advantageous. With the wall in the way, how were we to know what the others were doing?
Cheaters!
How did they train? What did they consume? If they beat us, it’s because they were doping. Sportsmen from the East, Soviets, Czechoslovaks, East Germans, Chinese…
Those were the eighties, we were naive.
We were naive until Ben Johnson showed us the light.
The sad light There are no good (western) and bad (eastern). They all do their thing.
(…)
This is September 1988, the Seoul Games, and Ben Johnson, a Canadian, and Carl Lewis, an American, are fighting for the 100m title, the queen event of the Olympic Games. Both despise and ignore each other. They are antithetical characters.
Carl Lewis is a star.
He runs, jumps, even sings.
Ben Johnson is introspective, a mystery, and he has a stutter.
On September 24, 1988, Ben Johnson is dizzy at the taco outlet. He flies and charges two meters ahead of the rest. Carl Lewis follows him with his eyes and tries to accelerate but does not close the deficit and, desperate, is the second at the finish line, 13 hundredths, an abyss, from the Canadian weightlifter, who destroys the world record: 9s79.
Big Ben is the king on the throne!
For 32 hours, the world applauds Ben Johnson.
Then they announce his positive, he has taken stanozolol, and now we see him at the Gimpo airport, in Seoul, surrounded by journalists and onlookers who have gone to photograph him and insult him.
The IAAF suspends him for two years. West, you have lost your innocence. Yours also cheat.
(That final is a monstrosity: over time, six of its eight participants are tainted by doping. Only Calvin Smith and Robson da Silva are clean; “I am the true champion,” Calvin Smith will say later; at the finish line, had been fourth).
Ours also cheat and, sometimes, justice is hypocritical.
Carl Lewis takes the gold.
Ben Johnson is the villain.
Public enemy number one, Ben Johnson is silent.
Prepare your return to the scene.
He does it in 1991.
He is still 30 years old, he believes in his redemption, he believes in himself. He competes again, he arrives at Barcelona’92. In Montjuïc, he stumbles at the start and is dismounted in the semifinal of the 100. By then, hardly anyone talks about him.
The parish boos and ignores him, both at the same time.
Swimming against the current, Ben Johnson goes further: he gives himself another season. In the winter of 1993 he competes in Montreal and they hunt him down again. This time he is testosterone. On March 5, his lifelong suspension is announced: he will no longer compete. Last Monday it was thirty years old.
Shame on you.
Ben Johnson is a national embarrassment. Nobody wants him in Canada, and he takes refuge in Falmouth (Jamaica), his birthplace, a port town that produces rum and sugar.
Gloria, his mother, welcomes him. There is no better refuge than the maternal home. There, Ben Johnson pulls himself together. But he needs money. He disputes races with horses and vans. He always loses.
When he returns to Canada, he launches his projects as a coach and as an entrepreneur. As a coach, he does crazy things. In 1997, he spends a few weeks conditioning Diego Armando Maradona’s physical shape: Pelusa feels slow, he needs another bit of speed.
He also collaborates with Al-Saadi el Gadhafi.
The son of the Libyan dictator is looking for a place as a footballer at Perugia. Another cheater: Gaddafi will test positive for nandrolone.
As an entrepreneur, Ben Johnson laughs at himself. He claims 35 million euros from Ed Futerman, his first lawyer. The judge dismisses the process before opening it. He founded 9 ”79, a nutritional line for athletes. He also creates the Ben Johnson Collection, a sportswear line that never takes off. Almost no one reads Seoul to Soul, a self-published biography. Actually, he shows a sense of humor: he advertises an energy drink, Cheetah Power Surge (cheetah: cheater, cheater; the powerful return of the cheater).
Today he is grandfather.
We don’t know what he tells his granddaughter. Perhaps I will tell you that the cheaters are the people of the East.
