Ben Johnson

Johnson spent his childhood and youth in poor conditions in Jamaica. In 1976 he moved with his family to Toronto, Canada. There he started his running career by training and competing. The talented track and field athlete quickly became one of the top runners in the world. For the first time in 1980 he met the American runner Carl Lewis, who dominated the running scene. Five years later, Johnson beat him in a competition for the first time. The two world-class sprinters also met in the 100 meter distance at the World Athletics Championships in Rome in 1987. In this race, Lewis was inferior to Ben Johnson. With an extraordinarily fast time of 9.83 seconds, Ben Johnson won the gold medal and set a new world record. Carl Lewis was already accusing Johnson of taking banned performance enhancers and anabolic steroids. The following year at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, the two runners faced each other again in the supreme athletic discipline. This time too Carl Lewis had to admit defeat. Ben Johnson ran even faster. He completed the short distance in a unique world record time of 9.79 seconds. The race was called the race of the century because of the unheard-of running time. Ben Johnson was hailed as the fastest man in the world. But not for long, because after the race Johnson was tested for doping and the results came back positive. It turned out that the athlete had been taking banned anabolic steroids for a long time. The case became the biggest doping scandal in sports history. During the subsequent investigations into the doping case, Johnson initially denied knowingly taking performance enhancers. It was only a year later that he admitted that he had been taking anabolic steroids since 1981. As a result of the Johnson case, doping regulations and controls were tightened. Johnson's doping offense resulted in the stripping of his gold medals and world records. He received a two-year ban from all International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) events. His economic support for sports was also canceled and he was fined. The track and field athlete celebrated his comeback in 1991, but was unable to match the performances of previous years. He managed to qualify for the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, but was eliminated before the finals. Among other things, he worked for the Argentine ex-soccer star Diego Maradonna. In 1998 he became coach of the Maccabi Tel Aviv sports club in Israel. Johnson repeatedly made efforts to return to competitive sports. In 1988, the athlete failed at a Canadian appeals court. In the same year he applied for clemency, which was also rejected. In 1999 he repeatedly applied for an appeal, in which a decision was also made against him. In the same year, doping tests on Johnson came back positive. He had taken a forbidden drug, a so-called diuretic, which was intended to cover up the use of anabolic steroids and other performance enhancers. In 2003 he worked as a fitness coach for the AC Perugia football club in Italy.