Medalist Asks Lifetime Ban on Ben Johnson

Former world decathlon champion Daley Thompson says Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson should be banned for life for testing positive for steroids at last year’s Olympic Games.

“I hope the authorities make sure than Ben Johnson can never run again because of the damage he has done to the sport,” the Olympic decathlon champion in 1980 and 1984 said in a magazine interview published today.

Thompson, the 1983 world decathlon champion, also said that drugs and commercialism have so tainted track and field that he would not want to see his daughter enter the sport when she grows up.

“I would much rather she played tennis or something else,” the Briton said in the interview with Athletics Today, a new weekly track magazine in Britain.

Thompson finished far back in the decathlon at both the World Championships in 1987 and the Seoul Olympics last September. Johnson was the star attraction at both meets, setting world records in the 100-meter dash at each event.

But the gold medal he appeared to win and the 9.79-second world mark he recorded at Seoul were wiped out when he tested positive for steroid use. He was banned from international competition for two years.

Thompson said that ban should be extended.

“Until we ban people for life, we are not taking the problem seriously enough. I think many of us don’t have the best interests of the sport at heart--and that’s indefensible because we are supposed to be the moral guardians of the sport.”

Thompson, still recuperating from a pre-Olympic groin injury, also said he will seek an unprecedented third Olympic decathlon gold medal at Barcelona in 1992.