Watched a BBC4 Documentary last night about Ben Johnson, the disgraced 100 metre runner from the 1988 Olympics. For those of you who are too young to remember the details, Johnson not only won the Gold, he broke his own world record into the bargain, but 3 days after winning he failed a drug test and his Gold was awarded to Carl Lewis, Lynford Christie incidentally was given the Silver medal. The programme showed how anabolic steroids work, which was fascinating because there are a lot of misconceptions what effect steroids actually have. In themself, steroids don't make athletes faster, fitter or stronger, they basically allow athletes to train about 5 times as hard as they would normally. When Johnson eventually faced an inquiry he admitted his guilt in full and also told the authorities that he had been using steroids when he broke the world record in 1987, therefore he was not only stripped of his gold medal, his world records were also rescinded. I have heard arguments from people saying that his record should still stand whether or not he was on steroids or not, because he had after all, still run the speeds recorded. It's a bit of a spurious argument in my opinion because the simple fact is although he did run incredibly fast and break the world record, it is clear that he would never have done so without using steroids. Does anyone thinke that Johnson should have been allowed to keep his Gold medal and/or his records? After all, he still ran at those speeds and won on the day?
I caught a bit of that. The lead drug tester mentioned that tons of the tests went missing right near the end of the competition. Basically the Americans rigged the **** out of it. That 100m final was probably the worst example. Only 2 of the 8 finalists managed to avoid failing a drugs test at some point in their careers.
...and one of those was Carl Lewis - the master of stepping out of his lane/arms flailing at fellow runners - he's an all-round cock.
Technically he did fail his, but it was for a herbal remedy apparently that although illegal at the time, would be allowed these days. I thought the guy saying he went back and started testing all the old samples recently to see how far testing had come, and he stopped before halfway because of the amount of fails he came across was more important to know.
All true but I thought it rather suspicious that Lewis had a set of braces on after what they said during the programme.
Check this ****. [video=youtube;jamJ4-C_TME]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jamJ4-C_TME&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PLDDC374967856EC17[/video] Being allowed to bite my not insubstantial banger is too good for him
