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The Men's 100 metres at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea – called by one newspaper "the dirtiest race in history" – ended in controversy after Canada's Ben Johnson defeated defending champion Carl Lewis from the United States with a world record time of 9.79s, topping his own record of 9.83s that he set at the Track & Field World Championships in Rome in 1987. Two days later, Johnson was stripped of his gold medal by the IOC when his post-race drug test indicated steroid use. His record time of 9.79 seconds was also erased. The gold medal for the 100 metres was awarded to Lewis, who ran 9.92s. Later, the world record Johnson held prior to the Olympics was also rescinded and Lewis' time in this race became the official world record, breaking the 9.93 mark that Calvin Smith set in 1983 and Lewis had tied twice since. Smith had participated in this race as well and finished fourth, but was elevated to third place and given the bronze medal behind Lewis and Linford Christie, the original bronze medal winner that moved up to silver. It would take another eleven years for a runner to run a clean 9.79 in the 100 metres, a feat Maurice Greene accomplished at the world championships in Athens in 1999.
Johnson was not the only participant with a cloud over his success. Lewis had tested positive at the US Olympic Trials for pseudoephedrine, ephedrine and phenylpropanolamine, medications available at the time in common cold remedies, but the USOC had cleared Lewis to participate at the games in Seoul. Christie was found to have metabolites of a banned substance in his urine after the race. Dennis Mitchell tested positive ten years later. Of the top five competitors in the race, only former world record holder and eventual bronze medalist Smith never failed a drugs test during his career. Smith later said: "I should have been the gold medallist". Johnson had demanded that Lewis be stripped of his gold medal, but the IOC had no intention of redressing the issue, stating they operate under a three year statute of limitations.
In the ESPN documentary 9.79*, eventual silver medallist Christie states, and footage of the race shows, that Lewis "ran out of his lane... two or three times" during the race, which should have resulted in Lewis' automatic disqualification. The numerous athletes using performance enhancing drugs at the time understood how long before a race, and possible drug test, they should stop using the drugs.Johnson believes that Lewis' Santa Monica Track Club teammate André Action Jackson, entered the drug testing area in Seoul to deposit stanozolol in the beer Johnson consumed to produce a urine sample.
The CBC radio documentary, Rewind, "Ben Johnson: A Hero Disgraced" broadcast on Sept. 19, 2013, for the 25th Anniversary of the race, stated 20 athletes tested positive for drugs but were cleared by the IOC at this 1988 Seoul Olympics, and an IOC official stated that endocrine profiles done at those games indicated that 80 percent of the track and field athletes tested showed evidence of long-term steroid use although not all were banned. It was Johnson's endocrine profile taken at those games that was used by the IOC to deny his appeal even when evidence presented by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and others stated it was possible a substance consumed less than 45 minutes prior (the beer given to Johnson by Andrew A. Jackson who did not have permission to be in the testing room) could have metabolized and contaminated his urine sample.
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; from Wikipedia.
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