Moses Decries Johnson-Lewis Match Race : USOC: Anti-doping spokesman doesn’t want to see Canadian’s suspension for steroids end in media spectacle.

Olympic star Edwin Moses, for years one of the most vocal anti-doping athletes in the world, defended the right of Canadian Ben Johnson to return to competition, but questioned the manner in which Johnson is expected to make that return.

Moses, twice Olympic champion in the 400 hurdles, said here Saturday that a proposed match race that would pit Johnson against Carl Lewis for a large payoff would be bad for track and field in particular, and sports in general.

“The match race scenario is definitely wrong, and I hope it doesn’t happen,” Moses said. “It sends all the wrong messages to other athletes, and to the public.

“I’m against the promoters who are pushing this and all the people around Ben and Carl who seem to want this. Ben has all the rights of any athlete to come back after two years. But to come back in this way has, well, all sorts of discomforting aspects to it.”

Moses also criticized Lewis, who inherited the 100-meter gold medal in the Seoul Olympics after Johnson tested positive for steroids, for appearing to try to promote a match race.

“The statement Carl made about Ben still using stimulants, well, that just didn’t sit right with me,” Moses said.

Moses, who will attempt to win his third gold medal in the ’92 Olympics at Barcelona, when he will be a month shy of 37, was part of Saturday’s House of Delegates program for the United States Olympic Committee. He is chairman of the USOC Substance Abuse Committee, and his report to the 400-member delegation was about the recent steps made in forming international drug-testing groups and standardizing their procedures.

For years before Johnson tested positive for steroids in Seoul, Moses spoke openly about his sport being in deep trouble because of the heavy use by its athletes of performance-enhancing drugs. When Johnson was stripped of his medal in Seoul, Moses immediately became track and field’s most visible spokesman. He gave hundreds of interviews and appeared that night on ABC’s “Nightline,” where he called for immediate action on an international level because of this “window of opportunity” created by the Johnson scandal.

Now, more than a year later, and seven months before Johnson will become eligible to compete again, Moses sees much progress in the fight against drugs but has ongoing problems with his own anti-doping stance.

“The Canadian Inquiry into Ben’s situation really did a service,” Moses said. “It was like a cleansing, like when people in AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) stand up and admit their problem.

“But it remains a dirty ballgame. There are still people in track and field who hide behind the old ‘Everybody does it’ thing, and there are even those who, because of the things I have said over the years, are attacking me now. I’ve even heard reports that I’m buying things like probenecid (a drug that masks the traces of banned drugs) right from Dr. Donike himself. (Donike heads the IOC’s drug-testing program).

“Like I said, it’s a dirty ballgame.”

A vote by the USOC’s House of Delegates on a proposal that the 400-member body be replaced by a 97-member committee was rescheduled for today because of the crush of business on Saturday’s agenda.

The measure is expected to pass easily.

“I have heard no expression of opposition,” said Robert Helmick, president of the USOC.

Among the special guests at this USOC session was Alexandru Siperco of Romania, a member of the IOC since 1955. Siperco had this to say about what happened in his country, and what the recent revolution did for sports there:

“People don’t understand that, in other Eastern European countries, sports were loved, and much money and help was given. But in Romania, our dictator hated it. Our medalists came home from the Olympics and were given $2, $3. That’s all.

“That’s why Nadia (Comaneci) left. Her escape is a result of a situation where she wasn’t allowed to go out of the country. She had no choice. She just didn’t know this revolution would happen so soon, so fast.”

Said Pal Schmitt, president of the Hungarian Olympic Committee: “In the last two Olympics, Eastern Europe won two-thirds of the medals. But our research shows us that, while that was happening, our public health was in bad shape. Now, we will change the emphasis, even if it costs us some medals.”

The USOC’s sportswoman and sportsman of the year awards went to swimmer Janet Evans and hurdler Roger Kingdom, each of whom followed gold-medal performances in Seoul with world-record performances in 1989.

The first-place medal won by Thomas Pelham Curtis in the high hurdles in Athens in the 1896 Olympics was presented to the USOC by Thomas Pelham Curtis III, 13, Curtis’ grandson.

The silver medal (early Olympic officials believed that gold gave a bad impression) is worth thousands of dollars and will go into an Olympic Hall of Fame to be built in Colorado Springs, Colo.