THE SEOUL GAMES / THE BEN JOHNSON CONTROVERSY : Commentary : System Running Amok, and Johnson Runs With It

Twenty years later, they finally caught a superstar amateur athlete using steroids and they consider it a calamity, a dark day for the Olympic movement.

But who created the atmosphere in which this can occur? Who said it was OK for an “amateur” track athlete to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and retain his Olympic eligibility, thus making the use of steroids a risk worth taking?

In 1968, I sat in the infield of a local track, talking with a widely known Los Angeles field event athlete who was using steroids. We chatted ever so casually about the muscle-building drug.

He laughed when I asked if it was illegal.

“Well, they say ‘don’t,’ but everyone does,” he said. “Everyone. What do you think the world record in the shotput would be today if nobody used steroids? Or the discus, for God’s sake?”

I wrote stories about steroids in 1968 and 1970 and during the 1972 Olympics. Doctors said that there were potentially dangerous side effects. But the athletes knew all about the side effects and said they were prepared to take the risk for the glory of sport.

A world-class shotputter saw it this way: “The Russians do it, so we have to, too. Sure, there are dangers, but I’ll risk it. Look what I get out of it.” He said he got to travel the world, make a little money, get his name in headlines.

My file on steroids grew thick as the years went by, yet officially the powers that ruled American track and field merely frowned on the use of steroids.

They never worried about it by name, though. They made generic references to “drug use,” which in those days meant amphetamines and other high-and-low, mood-altering chemicals. And there was a major concern over the alleged use of “blood doping” by long-distance runners.

Steroids? Some track athletes told me they didn’t even think of steroids as drugs. A U.S. team doctor in 1972 said he was far more concerned about uppers and downers than he was about steroids. “We know the kids are using them,” he said.

Detection was a key. Until it could be definitively determined that an athlete had used steroids, its use was an ethical question, not a legal one. Back then, in the 1960s, I recall athletes passing out Dianabol, one of the proprietary names for a steroid commonly in use then, without worrying who was around to watch.

Over the years, drug testing became more sophisticated. The International Olympic Committee banned the drugs in 1974, and tested for them at the Montreal Games in 1976. Ben Johnson’s 100-meter world record of 9.79 seconds is wiped off the books. The record reverts to 9.83. That mark was also Johnson’s, set 13 months ago. Can we assume that it was achieved without the use of steroids? There were suspicions then that Johnson might be taking steroids.

And what do we do with all those world records set in the 1970s by athletes who probably did exactly what Johnson did? Do we pitch them out? Do we assume to be invalid any mark achieved by anyone who set a record without taking a drug test and passing it?

Ben Johnson is little more than a victim of an Olympic system that has strayed from its original intent: sport for sport’s sake.

A few years ago, I remember hearing the elders of the Olympic track and field movement guarantee, over their dead bodies, that no professional athlete shall ever participate in an Olympic Games. No athlete who receives money for anything sport-related will be allowed in the front gate. Strip the medals from Jim Thorpe because of a few semipro baseball games.

But isn’t it strange how times change? Pros are in Seoul today and track athletes can reap rewards beyond anything ever dreamed of 10 years ago. Today, you can eat your cake and still have it. Earn big bucks for running and still compete in the Olympics. The powers say it’s OK to do both.

But to earn the big bucks, to become a star athlete in this big-money business, you risk taking a few shortcuts. Hey, everybody does it. You get an insider tip on the stock market; you call a congressman to ask him to do your business a favor; you call a friend at City Hall to get a speeding ticket wiped out.

If you’re a sprinter, maybe you take steroids. Hey, other guys are doing it, too. How else do you earn big bucks in track?

He gets caught. Does that mean he has to give back the hundreds of thousands of dollars he won for simply appearing to race in such meets as ones in Zurich, Milan, Stockholm?

Ben Johnson took a risk. He wound up losing a medal. He is humiliated and a nation is saddened.

But come Monday morning, Ben Johnson won’t have to look for work.

He is an amateur athlete.

Dan Berger covered track and field for the Associated Press from 1967 to 1977.