Francis: A Man Alone With the Truth : Track and field: He brands the Establishment liars and hypocrites. They brand him an outcast for his statements on drug abuse in the sport.

Charlie Francis would not be coming to the door because he was on the phone. The slim, cordless handset seems bonded to his palm in these days of hysteria and empire building and career loss. It is Francis’ lifeline.

There is much to talk about and, at least for the moment, many who want to listen. He’s keen on explaining the role of drugs in sport, exposing idiots in its bureaucracy and exploring why he--who has told the truth while others have lied--has been pilloried and defamed.

It’s Francis against the world. He has so much to say, and he can’t be sure how long he will be allowed to say it.

More than 500 reporters from around the world have gathered in Hamilton, about an hour’s drive from Toronto, to chronicle the return of Ben Johnson. Francis coached Johnson for 11 years, and by his own admission, directed Johnson’s program of using banned drugs to build power and strength.

Reporters and photographers are corralled, impatiently, in an area underneath the stands at Copps Coliseum. Johnson’s event is last, running at 10:48 p.m. and there is nothing to do. Periodically, bright white lights signal a television interview. Reporters rush to the scrum, hoping to find Johnson. False alarm, it’s Francis.

He is angry with Athletics Canada, the national governing body for track and field. The organization that week banned him from coaching in Canada for life. They said he could appeal after seven years, but that he must repent and retract all that he said under oath at the Dubin Inquiry into drug use in Canadian sport.

“I was surprised that they were quite as stupid as they were, because they know I’m not interested in coaching again, anyhow,” Francis said. “They somehow thought this would be a public relations move that would work on their behalf. (They think) it cleansed them by showing how serious they are by assassinating the one dirty guy in the game. Now everything is wholesome and back to normal.

“But the public is so skeptical now that this last little bit of hypocrisy just made their whole scene so transparent. No one believes them now. They are a sanctimonious, lying pack of dogs.

“Their comment was that they were lenient in my case. What were they suggesting, perhaps I should have been kneecapped? What else did they have in mind? How many lifetimes can you be banned for? They know I’ll never appeal. They’ve said, for me to appeal, I have to change my story. In other words, I’ll have to lie. If I lie, I will be like them and, therefore, acceptable.”

He says he will never retract his contention that drugs, used with restraint and under a doctor’s supervision, are performance-enhancing. And, he says, evidence is emerging to support his claim that the use of drugs is more widespread than many thought.

“They want me to say, ‘We’ve made a mistake and now we’ve gone to the Betty Ford Center, and now we are cleared of anabolic steroids, and now we are going to come back clean and run faster,’ ” he said. “Like somebody is going to believe that you are going to come back with the same or faster performances without doing something.”

Hypocrisy is not acceptable, Francis says, but he sees it everywhere he turns in the organizations of amateur sport. These organizations, in his view, have lost sight of their constituency. They want to assure the corporate world that athletes are model citizens to keep the sponsorship money rolling in.

“The only objective of major sports bureaucracies is to generate employees, to have more people under you,” he said. “The answer is always no fundamental change but more dope testers, more sports officials.

“You have rival armies: One army of bureaucrats who job is to generate results, another army of bureaucrats whose job is to stop them. These armies will war with each other at the cost of the government. Sport Canada has a budget of $68 million, of which $54 million goes to employees. Nine hundred bureaucrats who serve the needs of 832 international athletes. What’s wrong with this picture?”

There is this problem. If, as Francis says, virtually all top athletes must take drugs to perform at world-class levels, then who do we believe among the hordes of athletes who say they are clean? Is Francis the only person telling the truth?

“They must say I am a liar. How can I be telling the truth and they be clean?” he said. “If everyone who says they are clean is clean, then there are no drugs in sport at all.

“But if there is a wide-spread drug program, as every indication says there is . . . the evidence from East Germany, the evidence from the Soviet Union, the evidence from the United States, the information spilling out day by day is proving the true scope of it. Once you recognize the scope, then you recognize there are a hell of a lot of liars out there.”

Francis admits that he was, for years, in the camp of the hypocrites and liars. This was made worse by those in the sport whose preaching Francis sees as a ploy designed to cover themselves, to deflect suspicion.

“It’s precisely the point of the whole thing,” he said. “The cost of admission in this is the dropping of any values in order to participate. You have to do what it takes, whatever that is, in order to get by. Or you’ll be gone. I was part of it.

“I’ll give you an example. Some of our throwers tested positive in ’86. We sat there, we didn’t criticize them, of course, but we didn’t exactly stand up and defend them. We kept our heads down and watched while they were sacrificed and vilified by people who knew, as we did, what the truth was. We could see the absolute outrageousness of the hypocrisy.”

While on the subject, it will be remembered that Johnson, in his first race after a two-year drug suspension, finished second in the 50 meters in Hamilton. He was beaten by a former narcotics officer. Francis did television commentary.

Don’t expect to converse with Francis in the conventional sense. Francis’ thoughts tumble and spill out at a furious pace. His talking is constant and his arguments are the products of many years of thought and observation.

Francis, 41, lives in a 110-year-old house with his wife, Angela, in a posh neighborhood near downtown Toronto. The home is filled with antiques and art. Many of the paintings are the work of his father, Jim. Even on a dark and snowy day, the house is light and airy, its peace broken only by the near-constant jangle of the telephone.

The Francises did not live at home during the Dubin Inquiry, which began in February of 1989. They stayed in a hotel near the courthouse.

“It was completely exhausting,” Angela said. “We would get up, we would consult with the lawyers, we be there all day, we’d get back, we’d get all the papers, we’d turn the news on, we’d go to sleep.”

Going on at the same time was a more private drama. Francis’ father died after the Seoul Olympics. His mother, Helen, was in remission with cancer, but during the hearings had to be hospitalized.

It was a time of great stress for Francis, who emerged as the star witness and whose testimony galvanized North America with its insider’s look at the highest levels of sport. On the stand, Francis outlined Johnson’s drug program in remarkable detail.

“There was never any doubt that I would tell the truth,” Francis said. “I thought I would be stuck longer out in the wilderness. I couldn’t know the Eastern Bloc would fall so quickly, and so many revelations would come out so quickly.

“Then they have this just-say-no sign-up campaign, where East Germany, the Soviet Union and the United States get together and say we’ll eliminate drugs (in a unilateral testing agreement). That’s like the five Mafia families of New York agreeing to get together to ensure there will be no crime. I wouldn’t dissolve the police force in anticipation of happy results.

“There can be no doubt that historical perspective will prove me right. The facts must eventually come out. And for me, the relief. Can you imagine the ability to say exactly what you think and what you know? It was a hell of a big secret.”

And now it’s out. Francis remains one of the few involved to have admitted his role in drug use. He has lost his right to coach. He may not associate with Johnson. He may not even coach his wife, a sprinter. Francis’ book, “Speed Trap,” has sold well in Canada but poorly in the U.S. Francis doesn’t know what he’ll do now. Write some more, maybe, he says.

Public opinion in Canada is running high. Recent polls reveal a lack of confidence in the sports establishment. Many people say that, armed with the information Francis had as to the effectiveness of drugs, they, too, would have condoned their use.

What Francis hopes the most, he says, is that all this will have meant something. That the hearings and the controversy and the pain will have not been for nothing. At the moment, he’s not sure.

“It’s still too early to tell,” he said. “The way we still treat our athletes; the contempt we hold for those who don’t succeed at the highest level; the contempt we feel for those who disappoint, ensures the continuation of the process. Where did this philosophy for doing your best go? Obviously it went into the trash basket. There’s no lesson being learned.

“In terms of its overall effect, it still can be a success if they move forward. It can only be a catalyst, it can’t be an end in itself. Nothing has changed. The Canadian Track and Field Assn. changed their name to Athletics Canada--that was the sum total of their housecleaning. They seemed to think that by changing their name we would forget that the same people were there behind the letterhead.”

Francis makes point after point. The phone rings with more people to talk to, someone else to convince. For all his meetings and interviews and appearences on television, Francis is still alone out there.

No one in the sport acknowledges what Francis has said as being true. Sports officials are talking about winning the war on drugs. Francis still looks like a ranting wild man. “They say the truth will set you free, but the reality is the truth will set you adrift,” he said. “You can’t just tell the truth and not expect to pay a price for it.”