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The drug runners
April 18 2003
Pick the drug cheat . . . Ben Johnson wins the 100m at the Seoul Games in a record 9.79 seconds, leaving Calvin Smith, Linford Christie and a stunned Carl Lewis in his wake. Photo: Allsport
He was the supreme athlete, the model of what could be achieved without cheating. But Carl Lewis may have been too good to be true, writes Jacquelin Magnay.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Remember the much-anticipated Seoul Olympic 100 metres, featuring the clash of the motormouths: the quick accelerating Carl Lewis and the lightning-fast starter Ben Johnson, plus those tipped to battle for the bronze spot - Linford Christie and Dennis Mitchell?
Johnson won the race in a phenomenal world record time of 9.79 seconds, only to later stun the world - and break the collective heart of Canada - when he tested positive to steroids.
Fifteen years on, it has now emerged that the man who came second and ultimately was given the gold medal, the then four-time Olympic gold medallist Lewis - who would go on to collect another five Olympic medals - had also secretly tested positive to banned drugs.
Internal United States Olympic Committee documents released this week by a disgruntled former USOC anti-doping official, Dr Wade Exum, show Lewis tested positive to three banned stimulants at the 1988 US Olympic trials, two months before the Seoul Olympics.
Lewis was initially banned from the Seoul Olympics and from the sport for sixth months but he immediately appealed, claiming inadvertent drug use, and the decision was overturned by the USOC. But the incident was never made public under the USOC's privacy guidelines.
Looking back, that Olympic race has turned out to be even more memorable for the third placegetter, Briton's Linford Christie, who also tested positive to the stimulant pseudoephedrine at the time but was allowed to keep his medal by a one-vote majority of the IOC medical commission.
Later in his career, Christie was banned for taking the steroid nandrolone. And Mitchell? He too has been caught taking testosterone, before infamously claiming the test result was from drinking beer and having sex the night before submitting his urine sample.
The latest documents show Lewis and two Santa Monica Track Club training partners, Joe DeLoach and Floyd Heard, tested positive for the same three types of banned stimulants found in cold medications: pseudoephedrine, ephedrine and phenylpropanolamine at the July 1988 trials. They had not declared any drugs on the form requiring them to list "over-the-counter medication, prescription drugs and any other substances you have taken by mouth, injection or by suppository".
Lewis's lawyer Martin D. Singer told the Orange County Register on Wednesday that Lewis recalled taking a "herbal supplement he bought over the counter".
"Carl did nothing wrong, there was never intent," Singer said.
But the World Anti-Doping Agency chairman, Canadian Dick Pound, dismissed the claims of inadvertent drug use. "At the time this happened, Carl Lewis already had four gold medals from the Olympics," he said.
"You know perfectly well you've got to be very careful what you take. The offence is the presence of the substance in your body."
Throughout his illustrious career Lewis often accused US and international track officials of "lies and cover-ups" in relation to athletes using performance-enhancing drugs.
"There is no commitment to stopping the drug problem," Lewis said in 2000. "People know the sport is dirty, the sport is so driven by records."
The documents show DeLoach also won an appeal and went on to beat Lewis for the Seoul Olympic gold medal in the 200m.
The Orange County Register reported that the then US Olympic Committee executive director Baaron Pittenger had written on the bottom of the typed official letter: "Joe, this is the formal notification which I must send according to testing protocol. As you know this case has been excused as inadvertent. Good luck."
Tennis player Mary Joe Fernandez, who won a gold and bronze at the Seoul Olympics, was named in the documents as testing positive to pseudoephedrine, a claim she verified. She said it was the result of taking a cold medication.
The damning results were released this week by Exum, who took 30,000 pages of documents when he left the US Olympic Committee in 2000. He said there were more than 100 US Olympic athletes who between 1988 to 2000 tested positive to illegal sports drugs but were cleared by internal US appeals processes. There were 11 skiers, 15 ice hockey players and eight soccer players included in the list.
Others were Seoul 400m hurdles Olympic gold medallist Andre Phillips, who tested positive to pseudoephedrine at the 1988 trials; the face of US soccer, Alexi Lalas, who recorded an elevated testosterone ratio in 1992, and 1984 wrestling gold medallist Dave Shultz, who had a positive test for a stimulant in 1993. Shultz was reprimanded and allowed to compete but was shot dead in 1996 by the deranged billionaire John du Pont.
Exum was hoping to release the documents under privilege during a court hearing about his employment and racial vilification, but that Federal court case was dismissed last week and he instead gave the documents to US magazine Sports Illustrated and other US newspapers. Exum told Sports Illustrated that "in many of these [positive drug] cases the athletes were not prevented from competing".
He said at least 18 athletes tested positive at US Olympic trials and then were allowed to compete in the Olympic Games - a charge that has previously been levelled at the drug regimes of East Germany and China.
The Exum documents have not come as any surprise to the sports community. The Herald reported last year that a US athlete had won a gold medal at the Sydney Olympics after having a two-year ban for steroids in 1999 overturned during a confidential internal hearing in early 2000.
This athlete was one of 13 track-and-field drugs cases that were kept in- house by the US Track and Field and not notified to the world governing body, the IAAF. US authorities have repeatedly refused to divulge the name of these athletes under their privacy laws.
Exum said: "I never wanted to out athletes, I never wanted to name names. Can these names help settle the issue and change the system? We'll see."
Since 2000, the anti-doping system in the US has changed, with an independent body, the US Anti-Doping Agency now in charge.
Australian Sports Drug Agency chief executive John Mendoza said there had been a dramatic turnaround in the drug testing focus and the transparency of testing in the US since the new body was formed.
"They really set the benchmark now in terms of transparency but that is not to say there is not a problem before 2000," Mendoza said. "We saw that with the track and field problems."
The IOC has a strict liability approach to drugs, and will ban athletes if the drug is present in their system, regardless of the excuse.
Nonetheless, the USOC's spokesman Darryl Seibel denied any wrongdoing: "These allegations are baseless, misleading, irresponsible and could pose serious legal consequences for Mr Exum and his attorneys. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest the US Olympic Committee suppressed or concealed the results of any tests."
Copyright © 2003. The Sydney Morning Herald.
April 18 2003
Pick the drug cheat . . . Ben Johnson wins the 100m at the Seoul Games in a record 9.79 seconds, leaving Calvin Smith, Linford Christie and a stunned Carl Lewis in his wake. Photo: Allsport
He was the supreme athlete, the model of what could be achieved without cheating. But Carl Lewis may have been too good to be true, writes Jacquelin Magnay.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Remember the much-anticipated Seoul Olympic 100 metres, featuring the clash of the motormouths: the quick accelerating Carl Lewis and the lightning-fast starter Ben Johnson, plus those tipped to battle for the bronze spot - Linford Christie and Dennis Mitchell?
Johnson won the race in a phenomenal world record time of 9.79 seconds, only to later stun the world - and break the collective heart of Canada - when he tested positive to steroids.
Fifteen years on, it has now emerged that the man who came second and ultimately was given the gold medal, the then four-time Olympic gold medallist Lewis - who would go on to collect another five Olympic medals - had also secretly tested positive to banned drugs.
Internal United States Olympic Committee documents released this week by a disgruntled former USOC anti-doping official, Dr Wade Exum, show Lewis tested positive to three banned stimulants at the 1988 US Olympic trials, two months before the Seoul Olympics.
Lewis was initially banned from the Seoul Olympics and from the sport for sixth months but he immediately appealed, claiming inadvertent drug use, and the decision was overturned by the USOC. But the incident was never made public under the USOC's privacy guidelines.
Looking back, that Olympic race has turned out to be even more memorable for the third placegetter, Briton's Linford Christie, who also tested positive to the stimulant pseudoephedrine at the time but was allowed to keep his medal by a one-vote majority of the IOC medical commission.
Later in his career, Christie was banned for taking the steroid nandrolone. And Mitchell? He too has been caught taking testosterone, before infamously claiming the test result was from drinking beer and having sex the night before submitting his urine sample.
The latest documents show Lewis and two Santa Monica Track Club training partners, Joe DeLoach and Floyd Heard, tested positive for the same three types of banned stimulants found in cold medications: pseudoephedrine, ephedrine and phenylpropanolamine at the July 1988 trials. They had not declared any drugs on the form requiring them to list "over-the-counter medication, prescription drugs and any other substances you have taken by mouth, injection or by suppository".
Lewis's lawyer Martin D. Singer told the Orange County Register on Wednesday that Lewis recalled taking a "herbal supplement he bought over the counter".
"Carl did nothing wrong, there was never intent," Singer said.
But the World Anti-Doping Agency chairman, Canadian Dick Pound, dismissed the claims of inadvertent drug use. "At the time this happened, Carl Lewis already had four gold medals from the Olympics," he said.
"You know perfectly well you've got to be very careful what you take. The offence is the presence of the substance in your body."
Throughout his illustrious career Lewis often accused US and international track officials of "lies and cover-ups" in relation to athletes using performance-enhancing drugs.
"There is no commitment to stopping the drug problem," Lewis said in 2000. "People know the sport is dirty, the sport is so driven by records."
The documents show DeLoach also won an appeal and went on to beat Lewis for the Seoul Olympic gold medal in the 200m.
The Orange County Register reported that the then US Olympic Committee executive director Baaron Pittenger had written on the bottom of the typed official letter: "Joe, this is the formal notification which I must send according to testing protocol. As you know this case has been excused as inadvertent. Good luck."
Tennis player Mary Joe Fernandez, who won a gold and bronze at the Seoul Olympics, was named in the documents as testing positive to pseudoephedrine, a claim she verified. She said it was the result of taking a cold medication.
The damning results were released this week by Exum, who took 30,000 pages of documents when he left the US Olympic Committee in 2000. He said there were more than 100 US Olympic athletes who between 1988 to 2000 tested positive to illegal sports drugs but were cleared by internal US appeals processes. There were 11 skiers, 15 ice hockey players and eight soccer players included in the list.
Others were Seoul 400m hurdles Olympic gold medallist Andre Phillips, who tested positive to pseudoephedrine at the 1988 trials; the face of US soccer, Alexi Lalas, who recorded an elevated testosterone ratio in 1992, and 1984 wrestling gold medallist Dave Shultz, who had a positive test for a stimulant in 1993. Shultz was reprimanded and allowed to compete but was shot dead in 1996 by the deranged billionaire John du Pont.
Exum was hoping to release the documents under privilege during a court hearing about his employment and racial vilification, but that Federal court case was dismissed last week and he instead gave the documents to US magazine Sports Illustrated and other US newspapers. Exum told Sports Illustrated that "in many of these [positive drug] cases the athletes were not prevented from competing".
He said at least 18 athletes tested positive at US Olympic trials and then were allowed to compete in the Olympic Games - a charge that has previously been levelled at the drug regimes of East Germany and China.
The Exum documents have not come as any surprise to the sports community. The Herald reported last year that a US athlete had won a gold medal at the Sydney Olympics after having a two-year ban for steroids in 1999 overturned during a confidential internal hearing in early 2000.
This athlete was one of 13 track-and-field drugs cases that were kept in- house by the US Track and Field and not notified to the world governing body, the IAAF. US authorities have repeatedly refused to divulge the name of these athletes under their privacy laws.
Exum said: "I never wanted to out athletes, I never wanted to name names. Can these names help settle the issue and change the system? We'll see."
Since 2000, the anti-doping system in the US has changed, with an independent body, the US Anti-Doping Agency now in charge.
Australian Sports Drug Agency chief executive John Mendoza said there had been a dramatic turnaround in the drug testing focus and the transparency of testing in the US since the new body was formed.
"They really set the benchmark now in terms of transparency but that is not to say there is not a problem before 2000," Mendoza said. "We saw that with the track and field problems."
The IOC has a strict liability approach to drugs, and will ban athletes if the drug is present in their system, regardless of the excuse.
Nonetheless, the USOC's spokesman Darryl Seibel denied any wrongdoing: "These allegations are baseless, misleading, irresponsible and could pose serious legal consequences for Mr Exum and his attorneys. There is absolutely no evidence to suggest the US Olympic Committee suppressed or concealed the results of any tests."
Copyright © 2003. The Sydney Morning Herald.
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