IN BRIEF : Issajenko Says Only Inquiry Ended Athletes’ Denial of Using Steroids

Canadian track stars still would be trying to cover up steroid use if the federal government hadn’t ordered an inquiry into the Ben Johnson affair, sprinter Angella Issajenko testified today.

But once Ottawa called an investigation of Johnson’s failed drug test at the Seoul Olympics last fall “there was no point in trying to lie--it was over,” Issajenko said in her third day on the stand.

If the commission hadn’t been established in the wake of the Johnson scandal “we would have been denying it (use of banned steroids) until this day,” she told the inquiry under questioning by her lawyer, Dennis O’Connor.

In tearful testimony the previous day, Issajenko said Johnson tried to let the people who made him the world’s fastest human take the rap for Canada’s greatest sports scandal.

Issajenko said Johnson wrongly shifted suspicion to his coach and doctor with a statement last fall that he did not “knowingly” take banned steroids before being stripped of a gold medal at the Seoul Olympics.