SEOUL - Cheat. Disgrace. Canada's shame. Ben Johnson has been called all these things and more in the past 25 years.
Few athletes evoke the same depth of disdain as Johnson, the Canadian sprinter whose steroid-fuelled surge to gold at the 1988 Seoul Olympics opened the world's eyes to the menace of doping.
On Tuesday, 25 years to the day since he blasted down lane six of Seoul's Olympic Stadium, leaving arch-enemy Carl Lewis wide-eyed in his wake, Johnson returned to the South Korean capital with a warning for the next generation of athletes: stay clear of performance-enhancing drugs.
Now 51 and, he says, "older and wiser", Johnson said no mother should have to watch her son or daughter experience what he has lived through for the past 25 years.
"I broke the rules and I got punished. Twenty-five years later I'm still being punished for something I did," he said.
"There's people who murder and rape people, go to jail and get out. I just break the rules in sport and I've been nailed to the cross."
Johnson was indeed crucified by the media. After hailing him "Bentastic" following the scintillating victory, the media hounded Johnson out of Seoul, labelling him a disgrace and Canada's shame.
Award-winning Canadian journalist Earl McRae wrote in a searing column for the Ottawa Citizen: "Thanks Ben, you bastard."
Johnson, however, said ordinary people in Canada were not baying for his blood, as had been reported.
"Maybe people in the government were upset. Maybe because I was more famous than the prime minister of Canada," he said.
"But the general public, two months, three months after it happened I had a lot of fans, a lot of support."
On the final leg of a campaign that calls for radical improvement of the anti-doping system, Johnson talked of a second chance at life, of moving on, of a future helping young athletes to "choose the right track", which is also the name of the campaign.
At exactly 1.30pm local time, the time that the 1988 race started, a video of the final was shown on the stadium's big screen. Dressed in a black polo shirt, grey checked trousers and red trainers, Johnson had a hint of a smile on his lips as he watched his younger self tear down the track, crossing the line with arm aloft, to win the 100m in the Seoul summer sunshine.
He is a smaller man now.
The massive shoulders that just squeezed into lane six 25 years ago have shrunk. He has a fuller face but with the same unmistakable eyes; eyes that barely blinked in the most important 9.79 seconds in the history of sport.
The world record at the time, which was erased after he tested positive for the steroid stanozolol, is what Johnson remembers most about the race.
"9.79. That's what everyone was going crazy about," he said in the bowels of the cavernous, decaying Olympic stadium. "That was the key," he smiled. "9.79."
Johnson said he was running so fast at that time that he would have won Olympic gold without doping.
"I would have still won that race without drugs in 1988."
Johnson now a dope crusader
SEOUL - Cheat. Disgrace. Canada's shame. Ben Johnson has been called all these things and more in the past 25 years.
Few athletes evoke the same depth of disdain as Johnson, the Canadian sprinter whose steroid-fuelled surge to gold at the 1988 Seoul Olympics opened the world's eyes to the menace of doping.
On Tuesday, 25 years to the day since he blasted down lane six of Seoul's Olympic Stadium, leaving arch-enemy Carl Lewis wide-eyed in his wake, Johnson returned to the South Korean capital with a warning for the next generation of athletes: stay clear of performance-enhancing drugs.
Now 51 and, he says, "older and wiser", Johnson said no mother should have to watch her son or daughter experience what he has lived through for the past 25 years.
"I broke the rules and I got punished. Twenty-five years later I'm still being punished for something I did," he said.
"There's people who murder and rape people, go to jail and get out. I just break the rules in sport and I've been nailed to the cross."
Johnson was indeed crucified by the media. After hailing him "Bentastic" following the scintillating victory, the media hounded Johnson out of Seoul, labelling him a disgrace and Canada's shame.
Award-winning Canadian journalist Earl McRae wrote in a searing column for the Ottawa Citizen: "Thanks Ben, you bastard."
Johnson, however, said ordinary people in Canada were not baying for his blood, as had been reported.
"Maybe people in the government were upset. Maybe because I was more famous than the prime minister of Canada," he said.
"But the general public, two months, three months after it happened I had a lot of fans, a lot of support."
On the final leg of a campaign that calls for radical improvement of the anti-doping system, Johnson talked of a second chance at life, of moving on, of a future helping young athletes to "choose the right track", which is also the name of the campaign.
At exactly 1.30pm local time, the time that the 1988 race started, a video of the final was shown on the stadium's big screen. Dressed in a black polo shirt, grey checked trousers and red trainers, Johnson had a hint of a smile on his lips as he watched his younger self tear down the track, crossing the line with arm aloft, to win the 100m in the Seoul summer sunshine.
He is a smaller man now.
The massive shoulders that just squeezed into lane six 25 years ago have shrunk. He has a fuller face but with the same unmistakable eyes; eyes that barely blinked in the most important 9.79 seconds in the history of sport.
The world record at the time, which was erased after he tested positive for the steroid stanozolol, is what Johnson remembers most about the race.
"9.79. That's what everyone was going crazy about," he said in the bowels of the cavernous, decaying Olympic stadium. "That was the key," he smiled. "9.79."
Johnson said he was running so fast at that time that he would have won Olympic gold without doping.
"I would have still won that race without drugs in 1988."
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