Commentary : Say It Ain’t So, Ben . . .

Say it ain’t so, Ben. Say that the perfect race you ran in the 100-meters final wasn’t pluperfect. Say that your incredible time of 9.79 seconds wasn’t, indeed, incredible. Say that you didn’t want to beat Carl Lewis so badly, so desperately, so obsessively, that you’d do anything to beat him. Say it ain’t so, Ben.

Now we know where Ben Johnson gets his amazing, explosive start--from a bottle.

The dream race and centerpiece of the Seoul Olympics has turned into its nightmare. The gold medal hero has turned into the gold plated fraud. The World’s Fastest Man is on drugs. Ben, couldn’t you just say, No?

In the last 12 months, Johnson had lowered the world record a phenomenal .14. But if Johnson’s 9.79 here was juiced up, how can anyone be sure his astounding 9.83 at the World Championships in Rome last year wasn’t artificially induced, too? After that race Carl Lewis, without specifically naming Johnson, strongly implied the Canadian was using illegal drugs to enhance his performance. At the time Lewis’ charge was dismissed as sour grapes. But in view of this, isn’t it reasonable to question whether the Rome drug test was too unsophisticated to detect what Johnson was using? Might someone have slipped him magic sasparilla there, too? Ironically, Johnson’s positive test has not only reinstated Carl Lewis as the World’s Legally Fastest Man, gift-wrapped the gold medal and resuscitated Lewis’ quest for an unprecdented back-to-back four gold medals, it’s done what 10,000 public relations experts couldn’t--make Carl Lewis a hero.

Put Johnson’s name at the very top of a long list of infamy that includes swimmer Angel Myers, who said it was birth control pills; Tour de France champion Pedro Delgado, who tested positive, but won reinstatement on the grounds that the drug he used wasn’t banned this year, but next year; University of Miami football player George Mira Jr., whose story about taking a diuretic because his system was stopped up by Mexican food was hysterically creative; best-selling author and self-promoting linebacker Brian Bosworth, who admitted he did it, but only once, a very long time ago and only for rehabilitative purposes blah-blah-blah; the Bulgarian weightlifting team, who apparently eat their training table meals at a drug store, and others too numerous to mention.

Who’s next?

How many medalists are sitting in the athletes village, wondering whether to pack their bags, praying their masking drugs will work as good as advertised?

This is where we are in sports in the late 1980s: The key phrases are masking drugs and sky boxes. One is about winning, the other about money, but with the table stakes in international sports, they’re two sides of the same coin. How much was the gold medal worth to Johnson? One million dollars? Two million? Three? Obviously enough to cheat for.

The real Olympic motto isn’t faster, higher, stronger, it’s: Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing. The spoils need not just be money. Athletes often define themselves and their worth through victory and victory alone; the view is simplistic--you’re either a winner or a loser. Ben Johnson was a poor immigrant child with a terrible stutter. Winning foot races gave his life purpose and helped him form a positive self-image. Before you just condemn Johnson, condemn poverty and the out-of-control nationalism that creates such an indefensible fervor for winning. An athlete feels not only the self-induced pressure to win, but also the relentless pressure from his countrymen. In some countries the zeal for athletic dominance is a cornerstone of foreign policy. Is the motivation that moves the booster to pay off the halfback for the greater glory of dear old alma mater so much different than the cravings of nations for the international prestige attached to a haul of gold medals? For three hours at the opening and three hours at the closing ceremonies the nations of the world come together in harmony and friendship, and in between, they maneuver to cheat each other blind.

And while athletes often are reluctant to take these drugs for fear they’ll be caught, most would eagerly take them--though they’re well aware these drugs can harm and possibly kill them--if there was no testing. The drug Johnson took, stanozolol, can lead to liver cancer. If that didn’t deter him, what would? A 1984 survey asked world-class athletes if they’d willingly trade five years off their lives for a gold medal, and overwhelmingly--more than 80 percent--they said yes. Athletes are young, they’re in great shape, and by and large they think they’re invincible, so they’ll take almost anything to improve their performance. If you told them today that eating luggage would make them one-tenth of a second faster in the 100, by this afternoon they’d be lined up 10 deep outside American Tourister munching on garment bags. Don’t kid yourself. The drug debate among athletes and federations isn’t something as grand as morality, it’s legality. Can you outsmart the posse?

Today’s real Olympic event is pharmacology, it’s venue is the laboratory. Whose chemists are best? Gold, silver and bronze to the chemists who develop the best performance enhancing drugs, another set to the chemists who develop the most undetectable masking drugs. Wait, don’t give medals--give pill jars.

Like everybody else, athletes have a choice: They can try to gain an unfair advantage by taking drugs, or they can play it straight and let their bodies do the honest work without resorting to technological trickery. The dastardly bigness of the Olympic Games, with its promises of political prestige, worldwide celebrity and fabulous riches, pushes the athlete one way, and the countervailing threat of the drug police pushes another. It’s no wonder athletes don’t know which way to go. If there was an agreeable, coherent international drug policy, so many athletes wouldn’t be getting tossed out of Seoul. Johnson isn’t the only one disgraced--he’s just the biggest one; day after day the Games are being revealed as a maelstrom of malfeasance.

Ben Johnson knew what he was doing when he took the drug. He wanted the gold medal, and he thought the risk was acceptable. Nothing could have been sweeter for him than to cross that finish line, his right hand raised in triumph, his index finger proclaiming his solitary status as the fastest man in the world. But like the temporary boost of the chemist’s elixir, it didn’t last long. Say it ain’t so, Ben.