Teammate Testifies Johnson Was Aware of Steroid Use

Straightforward and unemotional through most of her first two days of testimony, Canadian sprinter Angella Taylor Issajenko suddenly broke into tears Tuesday during an impassioned defense of her coach and her physician against an implication that they administered anabolic steroids and other banned substances to Ben Johnson without his knowledge.

She lost her composure while recalling her reaction to a statement that Johnson made during an October news conference, called upon his return to Toronto after he was disqualified at the 1988 Summer Olympics because of his positive drug test.

He said that he never knowingly used steroids, which Issajenko said she interpreted as an attempt to place the blame on Coach Charlie Francis and Dr. Jamie Astaphan. Francis and Astaphan served the same roles for Johnson as they did for Issajenko and other members of the Mazda Optimists Track and Field Club.

“This could not be because I felt at the time that when someone has been very good to you, when someone has done you a good turn, has been responsible for making you great, that you shouldn’t turn against people like that,” Issajenko said, her words at the end barely audible as she began to cry.

Judge Charles L. Dubin, chairman of the Canadian government’s commission of inquiry into drug use by athletes, called for a 10-minute recess to allow Issajenko to calm herself.

Asked by the commission’s co-counsel, Robert P. Armstrong, upon her return to the witness stand whether she believed that Johnson knew he had used steroids and other performance-enhancing substances on the International Olympic Committee’s banned list, Issajenko said:

“I know he knew that he had been taking anabolics. He had been taking them for years. I knew.”

In previous testimony, Francis said that Johnson began using steroids in 1981. During cross-examination last week, Johnson’s attorney, Ed Futerman, seemed to accept that without a challenge.

But he repeatedly questioned Francis about whether Johnson was aware of the nature of the substances that he received from Francis and Astaphan. Francis insisted that Johnson knew. Futerman will have an opportunity to pursue that line of questioning today with Issajenko as the track and field phase of the inquiry enters its 10th day.

Continuing to read Tuesday from the daily diary that she kept throughout her track career, Issajenko, 30, implicated others in the use of banned substances.

She said that Pam Marshall, the 1986 U.S. national champion in the 100 and 200 meters, withdrew from a meet on June 10 of that year in Vancouver at the suggestion of her coach, Chuck DeBus of the Los Angeles Track Club, after he discovered from Francis there would be drug testing.

“Charlie and the coach (DeBus) are sort of good friends,” Issajenko said, elaborating on the entry in her diary. “Charlie told him there was drug testing. He (DeBus) did not know this. He informed Charlie that the athlete (Marshall) would not run. They came up with a fictionalized injury.”

It was the third time that DeBus’ name has been mentioned by witnesses during the inquiry. Officials of The Athletics Congress, which governs track and field in the United States, announced Sunday that they will investigate his alleged involvement with drugs. He did not respond Tuesday to messages left on his telephone recorder.

Marshall, a Long Beach resident, said she decided not to compete in that Vancouver meet because of a lingering hamstring injury.

“It was my decision,” Marshall told The Times Tuesday. “My hamstring was really sore from training. But I thought I’d go up there and see how I felt. If it was OK, I thought I’d try to run. But I when woke up the next day, it didn’t feel any better. I decided not to run. I didn’t want to force an injury.”

Marshall made the 1988 U.S. Olympic team in the 200 meters, but failed to finish in the first round of the event at Seoul.

Marshall said she did not know Issajenko’s motivation for naming her at the inquiry.

“I have never used anabolic steroids or planned to use them,” she said.

Marshall also said she does not remember seeing Issajenko or Francis at the June 10 meet.

“As far as Charlie, Angella and Chuck and their friendship, I don’t know anything about them,” she said.

She refused to comment on the implications of DeBus’ involvement in drug use.

In response to questioning by Armstrong, but not noted in her diary, Issajenko also said that she was told by John Smith, a 1972 U.S. Olympian in the 400 meters and now an assistant track coach at UCLA, that when he lived in Toronto in 1980 and 1981 he used a steroid, Dianabol, while competing.

She said that Smith also told her that he supplied another U.S. Olympian, pentathlete Pat Connolly, with Dianabol when they competed together two decades ago at UCLA. Steroids were not banned at the time.

Francis alluded to Smith and Connolly in his testimony, although he did not mention them by name. Connolly, who formerly coached 1984 Olympic 100-meter champion Evelyn Ashford, is considered a strong anti-drug crusader.

“Same old stuff,” Connolly said Tuesday by telephone from her home in Silver Springs, Md. “I’m not going to worry about it.”

Said Smith: “This is getting ridiculous. They (Issajenko and Francis) are fabricating and distorting everything.”

Smith said he befriended Issajenko and Francis during his two years at Toronto, and often discussed their steroid use with them. He said he tried to persuade them not to use drugs for athletic improvement.

Smith said he last talked with Issajenko at Seoul when he said the Canadian sprinter asked him for help to train drug-free.

“She was saying how she was going to get off the human growth hormone,” Smith said. “I told her she didn’t need it because she was too big. I was a coach telling her to get off it. What she testified (Tuesday) is totally contrary to the last conversation we had.”

But most of Issajenko’s testimony centered on her own drug use, which she said began in 1979 and continued through Sept. 1, 1988, 23 days before she ran the first and second rounds of the 100 meters at the Summer Olympics in Seoul.

She was eliminated in the second round, a disappointing performance that she said in part was because she suffered from hypoglycemia, low blood sugar. The condition might have resulted from her use of human growth hormone, a synthetic derivative of the human pituitary gland. On Monday, she testified that she suffered several side effects from her experimentation with large dosages of various drugs.

But she also speculated that she might have been sabotaged in Seoul. Although she had not used drugs in almost three weeks, she said that she continued to gain weight and muscle mass as if she were continuing a steroid cycle.

She said that she also felt stiff, much like her condition previously when she used a steroid named Winstrol, which contains furazabol.

The theory at least temporarily gained credence in her mind when Johnson tested positive for stanozolol, although she believed that he, like her, had not knowingly used the substance in recent months.

“I said immediately that there was no way,” she said, recalling her response when she learned that traces of stanozolol were found in Johnson’s urine sample after he won the 100 meters. “How could Ben test positive for a drug that he was not taking.”

A few days later, she told reporters at Seoul that the stanozolol had been rubbed into Johnson’s skin during massages by the physical therapist that Francis hired for his athletes, Waldemar Matuszewski. She said that Francis had speculated about such a scenario in a telephone conversation with her husband, Tony Issajenko, after returning to Toronto.

“When I heard that, it made absolute sense to me,” she said. “There’s no way it should have happened. We were all so careful.”

But she said that she changed her mind after a discussion in Seoul with another of Francis’ Canadian sprinters, Desai Williams. She said that he reminded her that Astaphan put them on a steroid program that did not end until three weeks before they competed at Seoul, while the doctor usually advised him that the drugs needed 28 days to clear the system.

“I just think that Ben and Jamie cut it too close,” she said, although she did not attempt to explain the presence of stanozolol in Johnson’s test.

Because she and her teammates were so cautious, she said that they never worried about post-competition drug testing. But she said that they were concerned when they learned in 1986 that the Canadian Track and Field Assn. (CTFA) might implement random, unannounced testing during training periods.

She drew a laugh from the spectators in the hearing room when she said rumors were circulating that the man administering the program might be former shotputter Bishop Dolegiewicz. Francis testified that Dolegiewicz supplied Canadian athletes with drugs on several occasions, and Issajenko testified Monday that Dolegiewicz once gave her an injection of steroids.

Submitted into evidence Tuesday was the contract that the CTFA sent to Issajenko in October, 1986. Before signing and returning the contract in April, 1987, she crossed out the section stipulating that she would agree to random, unannounced testing during training.

“Was there any complaint from the CTFA?” Armstrong asked.

“No,” she said.

The CTFA established the program in 1988 but did not begin testing athletes until January, 1989.

Issajenko said that Johnson was one of her two best friends on Francis’ team and recounted numerous conversations that she had with the sprinter about the use of steroids and other drugs. She said that he sometimes received injections from her and that there was no doubt in her mind that he was aware that he was taking banned substances.

The entry in Issajenko’s diary for Sept. 24, the day Johnson set a world record of 9.79 seconds in winning the Olympic 100 meters, reads: “Ben’s set for life. Fantastic!”

Three days later, Sept. 27, there is a notation in the diary that Johnson tested positive for steroids, followed by an expletive.

Times staff writers Elliott Almond and Julie Cart contributed to this story.