Does this recent scandal blow the Ben Johnson scandal away?

[Track fan]

I actually think because of the media has gotten more aggressive and there are more outlets that Jones and the related positives make Ben Johnson's scandal seem like he was popped for drinking ginseng before the 88' final.......

[eldrick]

i doubt it

you cannot beat the 100m men's final for prestige & probably joe public only watched 10s of the whole games - that specific final

no disrespect for women's sport, but i doubt joe public gives 2 hoots which woman won the 100 ( or 200 final )

[Powell]

no disrespect for women's sport, but i doubt joe public gives 2 hoots which woman won the 100 ( or 200 final )

I don't think the part about less interest in women's sprints is true. But what made Ben Johnson's story so big was that he made headlines with his run just a few days earlier, winning a hugely hyped final by a huge margin with a huge WR. Marion is old news, she hasn't won anything big for years, and nearly everyone who cared enough to have an opinion had for a long time believed she was on drugs.

[Daisy]

Ben Johnson's scandal seem like he was popped for drinking ginseng before the 88' final.......

That's not how I remember it. As Powell mentioned above, that was big news everywhere.

Now if Jones had been caught in Sydney it would have been a different story and possibly bigger.

[MJD]

Timing is everything.

[mike renfro]

Well, to steal from an old AW headline "The Greatest Fraud in Athletic History", twould seem that Ben has a worth compatriot

[eldrick]

Now if Jones had been caught in Sydney it would have been a different story and possibly bigger.

a sliver of a possibilty if marion had won in 10.48

remember bj won the biggie event of the sport & with a stunning wr - you can't beat a fall from grace as big as that in our sport

[eldrick]

no disrespect for women's sport, but i doubt joe public gives 2 hoots which woman won the 100 ( or 200 final )

I don't think the part about less interest in women's sprints is true

i wasn't referring to dedicated athletics fans ( to whom both sexes sprints are fairly equally important ), but to joe public

joe public coudn't have given a flying fig about who won the women's 100m & whether they were busted for doping ( think texas here & multiply 10-fold for joe public who's main sports are gridiron, baseball, basketball, soccer )

i'm fairly dedicated fan, but i must admit, i had a lotta work at the time & coud only watch snippets of those games - the only race for which i specifically made time for & dropped all other work for was that 100 final ( to me, that was what those games were about ) - i don't think i even found out the women's sprint results 'till reading about it in the following day's newspaper

[MJD]

Well, to steal from an old AW headline "The Greatest Fraud in Athletic History", twould seem that Ben has a worth compatriot

That's for sure. Likely been going on for over 10 years and she has been stealing money from people longer than Ben ever did and probably much more. USAnians usually do things much better and bigger than anyone else. Morons like Sally Jenkins are already falling for her Oprah rehabilitation so she likely will be fine.

[CookyMonzta]

Ben Johnson's scandal seem like he was popped for drinking ginseng before the 88' final.......

That's not how I remember it. As Powell mentioned above, that was big news everywhere.

Now if Jones had been caught in Sydney it would have been a different story and possibly bigger.

If Marion had been caught in Sydney after her 5th event, it would have been 100 times bigger. If she had confessed in 2003 or 2004, it would have been 10 times bigger. If she had broken a WR (certainly, either one of FloJo's), it would have been 1,000 times bigger if she had been caught in Sydney, and even worse if she had broken a WR in Sydney. The suspicions stretching over the past 4 years took most of the air out of the scandal, and the fact that she sang last week was little surprise to most. I saw it coming when she went broke.

[Mats Nilsson]

I actually think because of the media has gotten more aggressive and there are more outlets that Jones and the related positives make Ben Johnson's scandal seem like he was popped for drinking ginseng before the 88' final.......

Not even close to the Ben Johnson scandal on an international level. It is not even being discussed in Swedish media anymore. Like I have said before: Everybody [except Eldrick] already knew that MJ wasa dirty athlete after her husband got caught.

Nobody back home is surprised any longer when American athletes test positive I am sad to say.

[CookyMonzta]

Not even close to the Ben Johnson scandal on an international level. It is not even being discussed in Swedish media anymore. Like I have said before: Everybody [except Eldrick] already knew that MJ wasa dirty athlete after her husband got caught.

Nobody back home is surprised any longer when American athletes test positive I am sad to say.

In 2000 I wasn't too sure about Marion being dirty when C.J. got caught, because shot-putters were notorious for coming up dirty long before then.

As for Ben, he had the single most-obvious motivation for getting dirty himself: He wanted to beat Carl Lewis. That made his case far more scandalous than Marion's today. Marion had been reduced to a pariah long before she sang. Going broke and facing the possibility of being ordered to testify in Trevor Graham's trial (with the possibility of more dirt on her being revealed) forced her to wave the white flag.

[Mats Nilsson]

Not even close to the Ben Johnson scandal on an international level. It is not even being discussed in Swedish media anymore. Like I have said before: Everybody [except Eldrick] already knew that MJ wasa dirty athlete after her husband got caught.

Nobody back home is surprised any longer when American athletes test positive I am sad to say.

In 2000 I wasn't too sure about Marion being dirty when C.J. got caught, because shot-putters were notorious for coming up dirty long before then.

As for Ben, he had the single most-obvious motivation for getting dirty himself: He wanted to beat Carl Lewis. That made his case far more scandalous than Marion's today. Marion had been reduced to a pariah long before she sang. Going broke and facing the possibility of being ordered to testify in Trevor Graham's trial (with the possibility of more dirt on her being revealed) forced her to wave the white flag.

Are you so sure that CL was clean? How about those braces in Santa Monica runners? Your point is well taken...the duel between Ben and Carl got a lot of attention and of course it would have been a prime motivator for both of them to use illegal means to win.

[eldrick]

Are you so sure that CL was clean? How about those braces in Santa Monica runners

that's the 2nd time you've mentioned this

i don't recall him ever wearing braces during his international career ( certainly not at majors ) & not something i recall for deloach, steve lewis or marsh

do you have pics ?

[Mats Nilsson]

Are you so sure that CL was clean? How about those braces in Santa Monica runners

that's the 2nd time you've mentioned this

i don't recall him ever wearing braces during his international career ( certainly not at majors ) & not something i recall for deloach, steve lewis or marsh

do you have pics ?

I am no fan of Santa Monica runners in general so no I have no pictures. I am sure you can google and find evidence of those unexplainable changes in jaw bone structure that some of these athletes experienced from ~20-35 years of age.

Edit: You are well-educated and seem to have good memory as well. Do you remember that Dr. Wade Exum, the former United States Olympic Committee director for drug control, released more than 30,000 pages of documents that showed that Lewis was one of more than 100 U.S. athletes who failed tests that would have disqualified them at the Olympics 1988, but were reinstated after it was decided the drug use was "inadvertent."?

Edit 2: Straight from one of the supposedly objective players in the Ben Johnson bust [Dr. Fitch, Australia, the one busting Ben]: About the way US has handled the doping issue: "The American cover-up was part of a pattern of cheating, of unethical behaviour, that continued right up until the Sydney Olympics." About Lewis: " "It didn't surprise me [The Exum report]. You always have to suspect those that scream loudest about others cheating."

[eldrick]

well

i'm a helluva a fan of the ole santa monica runners & i'm a huge fan of tom tellez, who coached 3 succesive og 200m champs/succesive 100m titles/4 lj titles/ 400 title ( ?steve lewis ) - on achievements, i'd call him greatest coach in history

as for rest:

- why google pictures of their jaws ?

i'm neither a dentist & much more pertinently, i never saw them wear braces on tv meets

if you have the "zapruder" footage of them with braces - tell us where !

- exum revealed ephedrine +ve's for some of the guys in the camp '88 ( in his "warren" report ) - it was from a coupla $ cold remedy bought from the pharmacy - considering these were closely grouped athletes in near proximity for many weeks, it is not rocket science to conclude if one came down with flu, others in the camp caught it & sent the gofer down to pharmacy to get a cold remedy, which they all took

yes, at the time, if revealed, it dq'ed them from the meet & seoul, but considering this drug is on a par with caffeine ( now taken off the wada list ), it may have been prescient of ustaf to consider ephedrine on same par as a nonsense caffeine conviction & ignored +ves ( if you are of the belief that human science wasn't developed enough in '88 to decide that piss-ant ephedrine was no performance enhancer, then think again - it was hardly "splitting the atom" science ) - find me a 20.20 guy who ran 20.00 off ephedrine

then you have the consideration that the '88 trials were simple shootout between King & deloach ( no one else in the world coud break 20 ) & as long as they both qualified, one of the 2 wins gold - seeing as both tested +ve, their was no "one-upmanship" & neither gained an advantage over the other

deloach came in with quickest time to trials, King, after 4y came back to 200m - neither needed any assistance to make top-3 in trials

[mrbowie]

Nice try, pal!

It changes nothing as far as Ben Johnson is concerned.

Candians will never get off the hook on that one.

[OKOWO]

Are you so sure that CL was clean? How about those braces in Santa Monica runners

that's the 2nd time you've mentioned this

i don't recall him ever wearing braces during his international career ( certainly not at majors ) & not something i recall for deloach, steve lewis or marsh

do you have pics ?

I'm not accusing Carl or anyone of anything but Mats is right about the braces. Both Carl & Leroy had on them in Tokyo '91. They were very visible during their respective BBC post race interviews, especially the ecstatic, grinning new WR holder. If you can get the footage you'll see what I mean.

[Mennisco]

If Ben had never been caught, this would be a million times bigger. 22

[Mennisco]

ino disrespect for women's sport, but i doubt joe public gives 2 hoots which woman won the 100 ( or 200 final )

So the shoe companies are equal opportunity employers, or something like that?

[eldrick]

I'm not accusing Carl or anyone of anything but Mats is right about the braces. Both Carl & Leroy had on them in Tokyo '91. They were very visible during their respective BBC post race interviews, especially the ecstatic, grinning new WR holder. If you can get the footage you'll see what I mean.

i musta watched the youtube footage of the 100m & lj a dozen times over the years & don't recall any of this

i'll have to watch it again some more

[Mats Nilsson]

I'm not accusing Carl or anyone of anything but Mats is right about the braces. Both Carl & Leroy had on them in Tokyo '91. They were very visible during their respective BBC post race interviews, especially the ecstatic, grinning new WR holder. If you can get the footage you'll see what I mean.

i musta watched the youtube footage of the 100m & lj a dozen times over the years & don't recall any of this

i'll have to watch it again some more

For a doctor "in da hood" your grammar is excellent even compared to a Swede Eldrick.

[Mennisco]

For a doctor "in da hood" your grammar is excellent even compared to a Swede Eldrick.

Reminds me of a Guns N' Roses song, "Swede Child O' Mine"....