If He’s as Good Clean, It Will Be Sobering

When Ben Johnson ran a 9.83-second 100 meters in the World Championships at Rome in 1987, the track world blinked in astonishment. But when he took his shirt off, it almost swooned.

“Who’s he trying to beat--Carl Lewis or Arnold Schwarzenegger?” the wags wanted to know. “He looks like a shotputter.’

When he won the gold medal for Canada at Seoul with a 9.79 clocking, the experts looked at each other in disbelief. You don’t break the Olympic record by tenths of a second, you break it by hundredths, even thousandths.

But the Ben Johnson who won at Seoul bore so little resemblance to the skinny little kid who showed up at the ’84 Los Angeles Olympics that the wise guys professed no surprise when the bombshell broke that the Olympic star was doing it on steroids,

It was a perfectly prodigious feat, in its own way the equivalent of Bob Beamon’s breaking a world long-jump record by almost two feet in Mexico in 1968.

But that set off no major wave of sympathy and support when Johnson was first suspended for two years by the international track federation, stripped of his gold medal, his Olympic record and place in history. The Ben Johnson of that day was perceived as a dour, shaven-headed, glowering mass of muscles who talked to no one, viewed the world with suspicion and distaste, not to say disinterest.

Canada was more embarrassed than he was. The notion persisted that the commonwealth somehow found this creature in the north woods chasing sleds, captured it and coaxed it into a track suit and kept it fed and out of sight.

Ben Johnson didn’t help matters by steadfastly denying any wrongdoing. It was aclassic, who-are-you-going-to-believe-me-or-your-eyes? (or that microscope?) case of denial. Canada was not only embarrassed, it was insulted. It upped the ban from two years to life. He could never run again for Canada, and any track association that took him on was black-listed and cut off.

And then, the story took a new and dramatic turn. Canada didn’t change, Ben Johnson did. He became, if not gregarious, at least congenial. He came forward as the hearings mounted and admitted he had been using steroids for seven years.

He apologized, refused to fix blame and set about reconstructing the public image of Ben Johnson from aloof superstar to a guy eager to redress whatever humiliation he brought to his community. His admissions cost him all his world records--to say nothing of an estimated $15 million in endorsements, personal appearances and track programs.

Johnson was tarred with the headline “Drugs.” But steroids are not necessarily illegal. You can take them with impunity to help healing after an injury or operation. It’s mostly in sports that their use becomes criminal.

Ben’s bulk betrayed him almost as much as his clockings. Carl Lewis ran an Olympic-record 9.92 at Seoul--and finished three meters behind, beaten by 10 feet in a race that usually takes electronic telemetry to separate the first four or five finishers.

Even though his substance abuse was a far cry from something controlled by the Medellin cartel, Johnson took to flying around the country at his own expense, appearing before youth groups and lecturing against drug use.

The public found him affable and approachable and hardly the antisocial ogre he was previously thought to be. He smiled a lot, he even laughed. He never once cried or complained or whined. He did the time.

Impressed, Canada lifted the lifetime ban. The international ban expired and he was reinstated. The neighbors stopped writing nasty things on fence walls. Johnson could answer his phone at night and he cheerfully set about picking up the pieces, getting his life (and his running) back together.

He didn’t even break off relations with the coach who had started him on steroids in the first place. Ben Johnson didn’t blame anybody but Ben Johnson.

He’s going to be back on a track in January. His debut in this country will be at the Sunkist Invitational at the L.A. Sports Arena Friday night, Jan. 18.

The sport needs him as much as he needs it. And the Sunkist will be a big move toward reclaiming his tarnished title as world’s fastest human--ever.

He was through here to begin the promotion for the meet. And Ben Johnson knows he has much to prove.

There is no finer sight and sound in the world of track than Ben Johnson pouring down a plastic patch toward a finish line like the 20th Century Limited screaming through a sleeping town at midnight. He doesn’t run a race, he obliterates it. No one ever got off the chocks the way Ben Johnson does. He gets off the blocks as if he heard bloodhounds.

“I used to be uncatchable for 40 meters,” Johnson explains. “But then I would fade. I had to build up my endurance.”

Can he regain that explosiveness? Is a 9.79 or even a 9.83 in the realm of the possible anymore, never mind the probable?

Ben Johnson isn’t saying.

“It’s hard work,” he says. “It’s six days a week, six hours a day. If you’ve done it right, your head hurts, your feet hurt, your back hurts. It’s getting plenty of sleep, choosing what you eat. It’s staying focused 24 hours a day.”

You don’t roll out of bed and step off a 9.79 100. On the other hand, Ben Johnson comes close.

When he is asked if the pressure of proving his moonscape clockings came not out of a bottle but out of himself, Ben Johnson produces a slow grin.

“Pressure? At the World Cup final, I fell asleep between my semifinal heat and final,” hesaid. “I remember my coach yelling, ‘First call! You better get up and get out there!’ in myear.

“At the Olympics, I fell into a nap, too, right before the finals.”

How can you sleep 25 minutes before the biggest moments of your life and in an event where even a foot-slip can be fatal to your chances?

“I tell myself I have gotten as ready as I can, that I am as ready as anyone in this race and I let them worry,” Johnson says.

Of course, if you can beat the best sprinter in the history of the world by three meters in a 100-meter race, you can hardly be expected to recognize pressure. It puts you to sleep.

It’s a good thing Ben Johnson yawns at pressure. Because if he starts running back to his glory years and runs a 9.79 steroid-free 100, he can do more to rub out steroid use than any multimillion-dollar campaign.

And if he starts running 10.38 hundreds?

I don’t even want to think about it.