Johnson Took Sex Pills, Doctor Says

Ben Johnson’s doctor testified today that the sprinter kept a supply of silver pills to enhance his sex drive and counter the libido-inhibiting effects of steroids.

Dr. Jamie Astaphan told a government inquiry into the use of drugs in sport that Johnson had “silver pills in a tiny plastic bag” when he visited the doctor at his Caribbean island home of St. Kitts in June, 1988.

“These were pills for him to do his stuff; these were supposedly sexual stimulants,” the doctor said in this third day on the stand.

Such stimulants are designed to counter the libido-inhibiting effects of steroids.

Astaphan replied with an emphatic “no” when asked whether he planned to continue supplying banned performance-enhancing drugs to athletes.

He then recited a shopping list of more than half a dozen substances he said were easily obtainable in Canada that masked the use of banned steroids and hormones.

Astaphan said his favorite was “carinamide, the golden boy of them all. It’s undetectable, it’s not banned and it blocks everything.”

In later testimony, Astaphan defiantly stuck to his guns in the face of an “overwhelming inference” that he supplied the type of steroid that led to Johnson’s downfall at the Seoul Olympics.

Returning to the stand one day after stunning a federal inquiry hearing with tapes of the sprinter admitting steroid use, Johnson’s doctor was presented with a chain of evidence that the commission said led to the conclusion that the world record-holder was getting the drug that cost him a gold medal.

Astaphan disputed each link in the chain. He said his sworn testimony was the truth.

The doctor insisted that Johnson had not since 1985 taken the steroid Winstrol--a brand name for the stanozolol detected in his urine sample at Seoul last year.