The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Encore Presentation - The Ben Johnson Story -- New Questions About The Doping Scandal

Episode Date: August 14, 2024

Today an encore presentation of an episode that originally aired on May 15th. A new book about the Ben Johnson story raises some interesting questions about the fairness of the way the Canadian track star was treated after he tested positive in the 1988 Olympics. Mary Ormsby, a well known and very respected sportswriter, has a new book about the controversy and today she's our featured guest on this, The Bridge's 1000th episode.

Hello there, I'm Peter Mansbridge. Welcome to the Summer Encore Wednesday episode of The Bridge. This one is from the 15th of May of 2024. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge in Stratford, Ontario today. And excited about today's episode for two reasons. One, the content. We'll talk to the author of this new book on Ben Johnson. And also, we'll let you know that this is a special episode because it's episode number 1,000 of The Bridge.

That's right. You know, it's been almost four years since The Bridge started, and it's been a fun four years getting to know you and you getting to know me from a different way than you remember me, perhaps, from my days at the National. But a thousand episodes, I tell you, when this started, it was started almost as a bit of a lark. I was pushed into it by my son saying,

you've got to do something, you're retired now, but you've got to do something, so start a podcast. I could barely spell podcast, let alone know how to do one when I started. And so we started with the 2019 election campaign. So it was just a kind of an experiment. We did it for a couple of months and that was it. And then as we got into 2020 with the pandemic we thought maybe we better start this up again which we did and then you know began a relationship with Sirius XM which has been fantastic to work with the people at Sirius XM but keeping it going also was a podcast five days a week for the first couple of years four days a week now and the way I'm going it could be three days a week for the first couple of years, four days a week now.

And the way I'm going, it could be three days a week by next year. But a thousand episodes, that's something I never thought we'd get to. But we got to it thanks to you, our listeners, who've encouraged us to keep on going. And the numbers keep on growing. So that's wonderful, and it's wonderful to hear. So enough about patting ourselves on the back. Let's get to today's story. I'm going to play you a little bit of tape, a little more than 9.79 seconds of tape.

See how many of you remember this. Either you were around at the time or you've heard it since. This is what these 9.79 seconds and a few extra seconds on either side of it. Sounded like from September of 1988. Here we go. Oh, magnificent. A time of 9.79, a world record. Ben Johnson, what a magnificent performance. Ben Johnson has done it. A world record at Olympic gold medal.

Yes, what a September to remember. Ben Johnson, the gold medalist, a world record in the process. 9.79. What a voice. That was Don Whitman, the late great sportscaster from Winnipeg, but calling the Olympic Games from Seoul, Korea, back in September of 1979. Sorry, 1988. It was 9.79 seconds was the new world record by Ben Johnson, the Canadian sprinter.

And there'd been so much hype surrounding that race, so much hype, because it was Ben Johnson against his arch rival Carl Lewis of the United States. They'd raced against each other. They'd each won at different times. This was the big one, though. This was for the gold medal at the Olympic Games. And Ben Johnson took it. But he didn't hold onto it for too long.

Just a couple of days when the biggest doping scandal in the history of Olympic sport occurred. And Ben Johnson lost his medal, was disqualified, the record disqualified as well. Now, as time would tell, Ben Johnson admitted to doping, to taking anabolic steroids. But the questions are now being raised. Some of them have been for some time, but they're put together in this fantastic new book by one of Canada's great sports writers,

Mary Ormsby. It's called The World's Fastest Man. You know, Stephen Brunt, another great sports journalist from Canada and a good friend. Stephen says this moment, this moment from September of 1988, was the greatest moment in Canadian sports history. Now, it wasn't great because of achievement. It was great because of what happened as a result of it. It was an incredible story. So what's changed? Has anything changed?

What's different as a result of reading this book? I spent the weekend reading it. I really enjoyed it. And as a result, here comes this conversation with Mary Ormsby. So, Mary, my first question is simple. It's why. You know, I mean, it was more than 35 years ago now, right? And we all know basically what happened.

So why did you decide I want to write a book about this again well first of all Ben asked me to so that was number one but that came after many years of me looking into it again uh when I was working at the Toronto Star and my curiosity was piqued with getting to know him a bit more and listening to him talk about that time in Seoul. And at the time in Seoul, 1988, it was pretty much an open and shut case for everybody. Ben Johnson tested positive and he lied about it. And we found out about this later on through the Dublin inquiry. Case closed. That was it. But the more I began researching it and looking into documents from the time I got hold of his actual drug test from Seoul and all the supporting documents around 2018 I began to wonder is it possible to railroad a guilty guy and that was one of the big questions

I wanted to wrestle with in this book. And the short answer to that is yes, if you believe that someone who was using performance enhancing drugs could be denied or deprived of due process. So that is kind of the crux of the book in many ways, in the sense that nobody doubts he was on anabolic steroids. I mean, he finally admitted that himself at, at Devon. So that's,

that's kind of off the table. What's on the table is having said that, did somebody ensure that they found out about it in the doping process? You know, was there a fix in there? Was it just a bad system that, that unveiled this was somebody in the room who, uh, you know, was there a fix in there? Was it just a bad system that unveiled this? Was somebody in the room who, you know, aided the fact? That's where it gets murky, right? It's these

two things colliding. That's right. You know, you have to be a little bit careful because I was trying to, you know, sort of roll the bowling ball right down the middle of the lane. You don't want to be crusading for somebody. And you also don't want to dive into that big pit of conspiracy theories. But I will say Ben to this day still thinks that, you know, his beer was spiked and doping control by a stranger, an American who was in there with him. But if you sort of look at the due process, you can endorse someone's right to a fair hearing or natural justice or due process. That's not necessarily an endorsement of their behavior. So that's where maybe Ben's world and my world collide a little bit

because I'm focusing on how were you handled at that critical time when you had to defend yourself in Seoul? And there were some deficiencies on both sides, you know, the Canadian officials defending him and the IOC medical panel who were hearing him had lots of conflicts of interest. So my focus was on that. And so as part of that, you know,

were there any shenanigans in the doping control? Possibly. But when it comes to the question you've sort of already put out there, you know, would he have kept his metal had he been defended differently in Seoul? And if he had been able to keep it, whether you believe he should have or not, we have a whole different discussion about Ben Johnson going forward. I want to talk, I want to pick up on a number of the things you just mentioned. But let me start by trying to understand Ben Johnson, because you obviously have a relationship with him. You know him well.

He came to you, I guess, and wanted you to write a book. Yes, he did. So tell me about him. What's Ben Johnson like? He is someone who I think from that time in Seoul was broken and battered and sort of traumatized in that time and tried really hard to rebuild his career. And he's resilient because he's fallen down a couple of times since then.

It was the second drug fail and some financial issues. And it's been a bit of a lonely road for him. But when I got to know him a bit more, I found that he's a very big hearted guy. He's quite spiritual and he's resilient. I don't think if a lot of us has gone through what he had gone through, and it's maybe hard for younger people to imagine that now. But in 1988, he was an enormous star. And you have global shaming coming at you because he was the first biggest star in the universe to fail a drug test in the most spectacular and catastrophic fashion for him. You know, I still shake my head at how he's able to, you know, walk upright. I mean, I don't know how most of us wouldn't have been crushed by that entire experience, you know, being ridiculed internationally. And,

but he's, he's strong in his mind. You know, he, he doesn't have like a lot of friends, but the friends he has are loyal. I trust them. And, you know, he's in a happy place right now because he's training kids as a personal trainer. You know, some of those relationships he had with people who some assumed had kind of led him down the wrong path. Right. But some of those relationships stayed strong um charlie

francis you know perhaps the best known of the people immediately around him because he was his coach uh they kind of had a falling out of the way a couple of times before the race they had a falling out after the race they had a falling out out. But there at Charlie Francis's death at his bedside at the last moment is Ben Johnson. That's right. And it's a very powerful scene in the book. And there were very few times when Ben kind of lost it when he was talking about deep emotional places. And one of the times he began crying in deep grief was talking about Charlie's death. And I also hope that, you know,

through these sorts of scenes where, you know, Ben was portrayed for a very long time as a cartoon character, I felt. You know, very one-dimensional, you know, dumb guy who failed a drug test at the olympics how could he but he's a rich complex polarizing in the sports world figure and a lot of scenes i think in the book lend themselves to people maybe understanding him a bit more as a is a real person with real feelings real emotions and the damage that was done to him psychologically

and with friendships and how he's tried to rebuild some of that. I mean, that's all part of this man that we don't really understand as Canadians or maybe just as sports fans from other parts of the world. But just before I go back to Seoul, just to reinforce it again, he knew what he was doing, right? He knew what he was on. Oh, for eight years, yes. There's no issue about that.

No, he, you know, he tries to backpedal a little bit at the beginning because he was only about 18 years old when Charlie Francis says to him, yeah, you know what, I mean, you know, doping is rampant in a lot of sports, including ours. And to be at the very top, you might want to start using this stuff as a lot of, you know, some of your rivals are using. And he backpedaled a little bit by saying in the early days, he didn't quite understand totally what he was using. But over eight years, yes, he exactly knew what he was doing. And nobody pulled a fast one on him as he tried to explain away right after Seoul. You know, there's always been this belief that Ben Johnson wasn't the only one on stuff during that race, the final race for the 100 meters, that others were. Has that ever been proven?

In that particular race, no, Has that ever been proven? In that particular race? No, that's never been proven. But I'll just back up a little bit here and say at those Olympics in track and field, only one athlete tested positive for doping. And that was Ben Johnson. Only one. Like none of the throwers, no shot putters, no discus throwers, nothing. Just him, which alone is very odd but

going forward six of those eight men in that race including ben johnson and canadian team williams were linked directly or indirectly uh to doping infractions later on so they had doping troubles you know in the years to come, and then it was exposed later on that Carl Lewis did have an issue with some stimulant readings at the U.S. Olympic trials prior to SOUL, but that was ruled as inadvertent. Okay, well, let's go back to SOUL, because I love those parts of your book. I mean, it does read like a, it's kind of a page turner,

even though so many of the facts, of the basic facts, have been known for, you know, 35, 36 years. You were there, obviously, covering this story. I was there in Seoul just for the opening, and then I had to come home. So I came home, and then suddenly this happened when I got here. And it was, you know, it was an incredible atmosphere, both in Seoul, because that was the banner event, right?

Everybody was waiting for it. Ben Johnson versus Carl Lewis. Who was going to win? And both were, you know, proud of their things they'd accomplished in the past and they were convinced they could beat each other in this race so there was a lead up of what about a week from the opening till the actual race was on the i guess the second weekend of the games um but while all the attention is on the final there was a reason to start wondering about the way Johnson was being treated in one of the heats. And you talk about that in the book.

And explain that, because it's really, I don't know whether that was known at the time. I didn't realize it until I read the book. I went, oh, my God, this is very strange when you consider what ended up happening. So tell us about that heat. Are you talking about the false start? Exactly. Yeah. So for people who may not know, Ben Johnson's biggest weapon was his start.

Nobody could start faster than him, and the races were often won in the first step out of the blocks so in one of those heats ben was called for a false start and he was angry the crowd was angry and ben was rarely called for false starts at that point because he was the top sprinter in the world and you left him alone now luckily in those, in those days, you were allowed two false starts. But by having one, what that means is you take a little off your start because you don't want to have a false start number two. And the worry for Ben and his coach, and as it would turn out,

Richard Pound, who's an IOC vice president from Montreal, you know, he took some, Richard Pound took some action and went down and warned the Olympic officials, if you ever do that again, you know, we're going to have some, the least of repercussions because you're taking away his biggest advantage in this race. And I don't want to see that happen in the final. And I think as you state in the book, there was some indication later by an admission on the part of the group that

was overseeing that, that in fact, you know, perhaps there had been something wrong about that. Perhaps they had misjudged that. Correct. Because what had happened was the human starter had made the call for a false start. And at the time, the officials tried to explain to the Canadians that, oh, well, you know, the electronic system in the footpads of blocks will back us up. And Richard Pound went down there and said, well, I demand to see that backup information. You know, show me the electronics.

And they sheepishly didn't deliver it to Richard. And the idea being that, oops, Ben was clean. It was a clean start. And the starter down there just misjudged it because he's so fast out of the blocks. There's an amazing amount of stuff in this story about materials that were never shared with the public or even with the Johnson team about different things that had happened during that whole process. And those in those days surrounding the disqualification and the pulling back of the gold medal information documentation that wasn't shared. Right. Do we understand why? It's stunning.

When I look back on what the, now I will give the Canadian officials, you know, some benefit of the doubt here because, you know, it was a very fast hearing, you know, the test, the race was on a Saturday in Seoul and the drug fail and the hearing after the A sample was found to be positive was on a Monday. So they went into the hearing and there's the drug test results. But the Canadian team chose not to look at Ben's drug test.

They didn't want to look at the evidence. So that was one of the deficiencies, I think. And the second part was the IOC Medical Commission. And I think here at this point, Richard Pound, who was defending Ben, was probably getting some traction. He was probably landing some good body blows and making some hay in this hearing. Because suddenly, out of nowhere, the IOC Medical Commission chair says, by the way, there's a second secret test we didn't tell you about that can show long-term use. You know, it's an unauthorized test, but we're working on it. But so that means Ben Johnson has been using, you know, this dope for a very long time. And that's going to support our first test. And the Canadians had no disclosure on this.

They had no chance to get their own expert. They didn't challenge it. I think they were just so shocked. So this information was just left out there as another nail in the coffin for Ben. So those are some of the deficiencies I was talking about like you know in that actual hearing no disclosure super secret test no consent from ben to have it done on his urine but it just it just was allowed to happen and the thing that does the even you know equally devastating if not more devastating is that extra test, that second test,

was never done on anyone else, only on Ben Johnson. That's right. So he was singled out yet again. He was the only one who had it done on him and was publicly identified as such. And when they disqualified him, they said the same thing. He failed this test. There were anabolic metabolites in his urine. And by the way, he's a longtime user. Can you believe it? So all of this helped define what a cheater he was at the time. And when he came back to Canada, I mean, everybody was, you know, they couldn't, they were in disbelief. But it really helped define him as a villain, some sort of trophy catch for the IOC.

And the war on drugs was certainly over now because they got the biggest star in their celestial body of Olympians. And it was a really hard place for him to come out of it. In fact, he didn't for a very long time. You know, in today's world, we're very used to a very stringent policy, or at least it appears that way, in terms of testing, dope testing, drug testing on athletes, and especially so at the Olympic Games. But describe to us what it was like in 1988, because it was a far cry from the way it is today. Oh, yeah. Well, back in those days, it really was kind of the Wild West of doping. And even though rules have been on the books for many years to test randomly and, you know, during competition,

effectively all that was really being done was athletes were being tested on their competition day whether it was you swimming or boxing or track and field but in the case of track and field if you're an athlete who was doping you would dope during your training period and you knew exactly when the races were you were going to run and you think i'm going to be running in london or montreal or you know los angeles i'm going to. I'm going to have my clearance time, get off the drugs. And I've got two or three weeks before this big race. And my system will be clear because I know I'm only going to be tested

on a competition day. So that gave the athletes a very big advantage. And they learned very quickly how to, you know, handle their doping issues. So when it gets to soul, it's kind of unusual for Ben to have tripped a test because he'd been successful and rather sophisticated in, you know, relatively speaking, in using this stuff and not testing positive. And that's where the mystery man scenario comes into play. So I want you to walk us through that.

I mean, first of all, to understand, the listeners would understand, once a race is completed, is it at random they pick a number of the racers or do they pick the first, second, third? I can't remember how that works now. Even back in Seoul, they picked first, second, third in the final, and then off in a fourth, just a random person. But all the medalists would be chosen. So they go to a doping control room where it's restricted access in there. They basically pee in a bottle, and then that is tested. There's the same bottle. They take an A sample out of it and a B sample out of it,

and they test this. And if the A sample proves that it goes positive, that there's drugs there, they test the B sample. Now, what happened when Ben goes in there? There's somebody else in the room. Correct. So all athletes were supposed to be allowed one extra person to go in with you. So Charlie didn't go in with Ben.

Ben took his therapist, massage therapist with him. And he gets into his room and he's getting a massage and Ben's all dehydrated and, you know, thinks he's going to have some beers. But he goes into this room where he's designated as the gold medalist and there's this american guy sitting on the floor beside his bench and ben doesn't really ask who he is he's just happy he's won the gold medal in world record time the beer's full of the fridge is full of beer can you pass me a couple of beers so they begin chatting so this man is beside ben we learn later on he's an american who's uh you know friendly with the carl lewis camp carl lewis is ben's biggest rival and he was just there and we find out later on that he was uh sent in there

by uh carl lewis's manager joe douglas keep an eye on Ben, to make sure he wasn't taking anything funny to mask his drug use or anything like that. So that's where Ben feels later on, this guy might have put some steroid pills into his beer. And that's where that whole conspiracy theory began, was in that room. But the thing to know is the man's name is Andre Jackson. He did have an official pass on, but Andre has said that pass was to be for the 200 meter race, which was several days in the future. He should not have been in the room at that time. Somehow he got in.

And one of the continuing strange things that you unveil in this book is that Johnson and Jackson, you know, eventually had a relationship. They met a couple of times. Oh, yeah. Ben just mentioned this out of the blue one time. He said, oh, yeah, well, yeah, Andre Jackson was texting me about something and i was you know with him in a las vegas hotel and i said what what are you doing this guy you've said for years this guy set you up destroyed your life and now you're buddies but ben says i like to keep my enemies you know close just so one day he might actually admit what he's done so you know in the book we do talk about a couple of uh times when they actually got So, you know, in the book, we do talk about a couple of times

when they actually got together. You know, they dispute the reasons they got together. But Ben said we got together twice specifically to talk about or try to, you know, elicit a confession from Andre Jackson that he had spiked his beer with steroids. And I guess the short story is Ben never got that confession,

but it's a pretty nutty set of circumstances. It sure is. Help me with this, because, you know, I really enjoyed your book. I found it to be I found it to be a, you know, a page turner going through some of the things I already knew, but so much that I didn't know, or if I knew it, I'd certainly long since forgotten it. But by the end, when I put the book down, I didn't know what to believe. I don't know what to think anymore on this story.

Interesting. What do you think? What is your theory at the end of it all? What I stick closest to is really the only thing I've got the evidence and the research for is that he had done so much for back in the day that's what i try to stick to and if you're talking about what happened with his sample the other thing i think i i can't believe ben or charlie or the doctor would have made any mistake in getting him any stairwards so close to a race. But what we did find out, too, was the metabolite level, which is the traces of the anabolic in the urine sample, was extremely high. It was really absurdly high. That's something that I'm not sure I'll ever be able to answer because if they caught him normally, just sort of with clearance time and tapering down from using his drugs,

the metabolite level should have been so much lower. But this was a huge spike. I just don't know if we'll ever figure that one out. So I'm not sure I answered your question because in many ways, I'm not exactly sure what to think at the end without trying to sound like a crazy person who's into conspiracy theories. Well, it does come down to this question of due process because nobody disputes the fact that he was on it. He was on the drug. It's whether or not he had the right process of justice, basically, during those moments immediately following the race.

And, you know, some might even argue whether he had the right process of the Dublin Inquiry. I would say you are correct on both counts because due process to me wasn't really just limited to what happened in Solo. That was the biggest domino to fall. The Dublin Inquiry too, I mean, it was a groundbreaking event limited to what happened in solo that was the biggest domino to fall the dublin inquiry too i mean it it was a groundbreaking uh event uh testimony under oath that nobody had ever heard before about how athletes were using drugs this was so new to everybody back in 1988 it was like

it was really mind-blowing uh but if ben had gotten due process and somehow was able to hold on to his metal, W. Carly wouldn't have happened. This book wouldn't have happened. Nobody would have been any of the wiser. You know what I mean? I mean,

there might've just been rumors about him that he'd beat the test somehow or had some fancy talk in the, in the, in the hearing and got away or got the benefit of the doubt. But he did not get a fair shot in Seoul. So to me, that was always the troublesome part in the Ben Johnson story was how he was handled right in Seoul and in the days and months after that as well. Should we believe that the system is clean now or that it's still dirty dirty and not only that people are testing uh positive even this year you know for uh

performance enhancing drugs including steroids that athletes were using in the 80s so steroids are still a thing stimulants are still a thing blood So steroids are still a thing. Stimulants are still a thing. Blood doping is still a thing. It's much more sophisticated system of testing now, but the athletes as they were back in the day are always, well, the ones who are cheating, not all, a lot of athletes are clean. The ones who are cheating are all often ahead of the,

the scientists who are trying to catch them. That hasn't changed in 40 years. Before I let you go, where were you in the moment of the race? I was in the press stands in Seoul in the middle of this wild, wild crowd watching the race. It's amazing, eh? 9.79 seconds. Yeah. All of that for that short of a time period. I mean, I know I was at my cottage in the Gadno Hills,

north of Ottawa, and screaming and yelling at the top of my lungs when it happened. And within three days, I was back in Toronto and doing the national with the lead story we never thought we'd have, right? No. And everything that rolled out after that. Mary, it's a good book. And I thank you for writing it because it can't have been easy.

Some of these people through this process, obviously you developed a relationship with, they became kind of friends, but to tell the story and the detail that you've done and who knows, it could be another one. We don't know it all yet. Thank you so much for, for reading it and for having me in this conversation. I'm very grateful. No problem. Thanks, Mary. Take care. Mary Ormsby, formerly with the Toronto Star, now author of the book, which I'm sure will be a bestseller. It's called World's Fastest Man. The Ben Johnson story. It's the incredible life of Ben Johnson by Mary Ormsby.

And I would look forward in your bookstores starting today. It goes on sale today. A story that's going to, you know, as I said at the beginning, some of us remember it well because we lived it, right? Others are born afterwards. So in other words, you're under 35, and we do have some of that age group in our listener core. And this is a bit of Canadian history, certainly a bit of Canadian sports history, but it turned the country upside down

through that whole Dublin inquiry. The shame of that weekend, the country went from an incredible high on the win to an incredible low when the story started to come out about what had happened. And here all these years later, it's still a story worth knowing. And as Mary says, she doesn't dive into that pit of conspiracy theories, but she does take a really important, smart look

at some of what appeared to be inequities about the way he was treated. And that's Faribault. So anyway, if you get the chance, read the book. We're going to take a break. Come right back with more on this 1,000th episode of The Bridge right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge on Sirius XM, Channel 167 Canada Talks,

or on your favorite podcast platform. And as we often say, however you listen to the program, we're glad to have you with us. And that was your Summer Wednesday Encore episode of The Bridge. It was from the 15th of May of this year. Hope you enjoyed it.