We are not all like Ben Johnson – Tyson Gay

Jul 10 2010 by Stuart Rayner, The Journal

HE is the spectre which has been looming over 100m running for over 20 years, the stain on sprinting’s character which stubbornly refuses to be removed.

“Who?” jokes Tyson Gay when the name Ben Johnson is inevitably brought up in Gateshead yesterday.

Inevitable because Johnson has been at it again, plugging a new book he claims will finally end his reputation as athletics’ most notorious cheats.

The Canadian is by no means the sport’s only cheat, almost certainly not its most prolific, but remains its most reviled.

It is 22 years since Johnson, his eyes bulging even more than his muscles, crossed the line first in the 100m at the Seoul Olympics. It remains the most notorious race in athletics history – four of the first five finishers failed drugs tests in their career – and there can scarcely be a sports fan who does not remember where he or she was when the news of Johnson’s transgression broke in September 1988. Athletics has been fighting to restore its reputation ever since.

Johnson has since admitted he took steroids at the time – but only to help him train, not to record his astonishing 9.79secs world-record run.

In between vehemently protesting his innocence in the face of all the evidence so far published (he claims the conspiracy-theory book will contain concrete evidence to the contrary), Johnson told the BBC on Thursday he has “no faith” in “corrupted” sprinting any more, claiming “The person who (is) clean in this business is the person who doesn’t make it.”

Just about everyone in athletics regards Johnson as a tiresome irritant that steadfastly refuses to go away. Judging by Gay’s reaction, he is no different.

“I just hope that when I leave the sport, I’m still able to get the same attention that he gets now,” he says wearily. “Him saying he has no faith in the sport, that’s almost irrelevant in my eyes.

“Just because he had to take performance enhancing drugs to achieve what he did, doesn’t mean everyone else has to.”