US Olympic track and field forever tainted by doping

The phone rang at 6:30 a.m., Seoul time, Sept. 27, 1988.

On the other end was Jim Colonna, sports editor of the Orange County Register, and he was not his chatty self. No anecdotes about the Rams' last loss or his own last birdie.

"This is Jim," he said simply. "Ben Johnson tested positive."

Three days before, Canada's Johnson had thrust track and field into perhaps its highest worldwide orbit. He had run the 100 meters in 9.79 seconds, breaking his year-old world record by nearly a half-second, and he had beaten Carl Lewis in doing so.

But on that Tuesday, when the vials turned up most vile, Johnson had thrown his sport out an airplane window.

He had been using stanozolol, an anabolic steroid mostly used by bodybuilders. Lewis wound up with the gold medal.

It was not the first case of Olympic cheating. The dominance of the East German women's team was attributed to better living through chemistry - and after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world learned how gruesome that chemistry really was.

But it was the day the music died for track and field, at least in America.

It is far easier to find a bull rider or an Arena Football receiver on TV than it is to find a track athlete.

One problem is that track and field is so elemental - no gadgets, no body armor - and thus is so boring in the virtual 21st Century.

But the big problem is that none of the fans believe the winners are playing fair. And why should they? They're getting their information from the losers.

Shortly after Johnson was ousted, Brazilian 800-meter runner Joaquim Cruz called heptathlete and long jump champ Jackie Joyner-Kersee "a gorilla" and said Florence Griffith Joyner, who set world records in the 100 and 200 that still stand, was "not quite feminine." Tragically, those unproved accusations followed Flo-Jo to the grave.

After that, rare was the American loser who didn't cast an ethical shadow on the foreign winner, in either track or swimming. The American media was happy to follow Innuendo Road.

In Atlanta, Irish swimmer Michelle Smith won three gold medals to the general incredulity of all concerned. She was later banned for four years because she used alcohol to mask the urine sample.

In Sydney, Dutch swimmers Inge DeBruijn and Peter Von Hoogenbrand each won three gold medals, amid much eye-rolling. There were no positive drug tests in Olympic swimming in 2000, and even though the swimming federations are now testing for EPO at their world meets and in out-of-competition procedures, the Dutch pair has come up clean.

On Wednesday, The Register published a comprehensive expose that showed the U.S. Olympic Committee ignored positive tests by Lewis, 200-meter runner Joe DeLoach and 400-meter hurdler Andre Phillips at the `88 Olympic Trials. They were allowed to compete in Seoul although they could have been disqualified. DeLoach and Phillips won a gold medal apiece and Lewis won two.

The infractions did not involve steroids, but over-the-counter banned substances. Those substances can enhance performance, and, taken in outsized doses, could represent a health risk. But the steroids Johnson was taking were directly linked to liver cancer.

Significantly, no drug use by Griffith Joyner or Joyner-Kersee was mentioned.

In other news, Ben Plucknett died last Nov. 17, at the age of 48. He was a world-record holder in the discus. He also was the first American to be suspended by the international governing body for using an anabolic steroid, in 1981.

In still other news, Kim Gallagher died last Nov. 18, at the age of 38. She won medals in the 800 meters in the `84 and `88 Olympics. The cause of death was a stroke. Gallagher's former coach was banned for life by USA Track and Field for dispensing steroids to his athletes. Gallagher always denied she used illegal substances.

Thanks to Ben Johnson, all premature track obituaries will bubble up with questions. And all landmark performances will be accompanied by whispers.

Funny that the same ethic doesn't apply to other sports.

Mark McGwire's home run record was never seriously tainted by the fact that he used androstenedione, a substance that would have been illegal at the Olympics. The same writers who mock Barry Bonds' sudden musculature glorified McGwire.

From the time the first pigskin was inflated, football players have needed something to get them through the night.

A minor-league pitcher passes out and dies after taking ephedra. So does a big Minnesota Vikings' tackle (according to the Vikings). The popularity of baseball and football do not suffer.

Maybe track and field is different because none of us can relate to the impossibility of what these champions do. Michael Johnson ran the 200 meters in 19.32 in Atlanta. He tore up his hamstring in the process. When a human body runs that fast, it comes apart.

The drug cops are mobilized for Athens in `04, but as long as track's champions can win and cash in before they get caught, they'll find a way.

Charlie Francis, Ben Johnson's coach, wrote this in a magazine called Testosterone:

"Drug use in sport has a long and grand tradition. Perhaps we should give the medals to the scientists assisting the athletes. If anyone is clean, it's going to be the losers."

In the world that Francis and Johnson left us, the losers are dirty, too.