Ben Johnson (athlete)

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Ben Johnson (2017)

Ben Johnson (actually Benjamin Sinclair Johnson ; born December 30, 1961 in Falmouth , Jamaica ) is a former Canadian sprinter of Jamaican origin.

To escape a life of poor conditions, his mother emigrated with him to Canada in 1976. There he soon came into contact with athletics and was able to celebrate his first sporting successes in the 100 meter run . He caused a sensation with his powerful, mostly two-legged jump from the starting block , with which he usually secured a lead in the first few meters, which he then defended to the finish.

Rivalry with Carl Lewis

Ben Johnson achieved particular popularity through his duels with the American Carl Lewis . While he was still defeated in the 100 meter final at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, he was able to celebrate his first major triumph just two years later at the Goodwill Games in Moscow. With a victory time of 9.95 seconds, he managed for the first time to beat Carl Lewis directly in an important race. In addition, it set a personal best that was better than that of his rival, which at the time was 9.97 seconds. In the subsequent meeting of the two at the World Athletics Championships in Rome in 1987 , Johnson again retained the upper hand. He improved Calvin Smith's world record by a tenth of a second in the 100 meter final with a time of 9.83 seconds . In the same year he was honored with the Associated Press Sportsman of the Year award and was named World Sportsman of the Year by the Italian sports magazine La Gazzetta dello Sport .

Doping scandal

At the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, he again won the highly anticipated 100-meter duel with a world record time of 9.79 seconds ahead of his great opponent Carl Lewis, who also achieved a personal best with 9.92 seconds. However, this grand victory was overshadowed a short time later by one of the greatest scandals in Olympic history. Due to the unusually large muscle mass for a sprinter at the time, critics had long suspected that Canadians were a consumer of muscle-building steroids . Two days after the so-called "run of the century", these assumptions were confirmed. In Johnson's compulsory urine sample , very clear traces of stanozolol , a synthetic anabolic steroid, for which the doping investigator Manfred Donike had developed an improved detection method just before the games, could be detected . Thereupon the gold medal was revoked for doping and awarded to Carl Lewis, who initially came second. After Ben Johnson had admitted that he had been ingesting unauthorized means to improve performance since 1981, he lost the world championship title of 1987 and the world record to Carl Lewis even without proof of doping, only he was allowed to keep the bronze medal he had won at the 1984 Olympic Games. He was also banned from all competitions for two years.

Johnson and his trainer admitted to having systematically used doping, but to this day insist that they never used stanozolol, the agent whose evidence led to the withdrawal of the gold medal. Rumors that Johnson was only exposed as a doper because of sabotage by a competitor, presumably Carl Lewis, have therefore never ceased.

Comeback and lifelong suspension

After his comeback in 1991, Ben Johnson was never able to build on his previous achievements. At the 1991 World Cup in Tokyo, he only took part as a relay runner. For the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, ​​he was able to qualify for the 100-meter competition, but was eliminated in the semifinals as the last of his run. After a new doping result in a race in Montreal in 1993 , he was finally banned from the IAAF as a repeat offender for life. In later years, Ben Johnson made several attempts to legally lift the ban imposed on him, but was unsuccessful in each of the proceedings brought by him.

As a consequence, Johnson tried other sports, including as a wide receiver in American football , where he had only moderate success. In 2003 he reappeared in Italy as the fitness coach of the AC Perugia Calcio soccer club .

In December 2006, Ben Johnson made suspicions that his then competitor Carl Lewis had something to do with his doping offense: "I don't want to say too much, but: he had something to do with it." Allegedly, a US friend of Lewis' had -Football player Johnson poured the prohibited substance into the beer before the doping control.

literature

Web links

Commons : Ben Johnson  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Ben Johnson Olympic final 1988 , YouTube , July 19, 2016.
  2. ↑ The Ben Johnson case: Involuntary merit of a fraudster September 26, 2013 , aachener-zeitung.de
  3. ↑ Lewis sabotage claim , Herald Sun, December 1, 2006.
  4. ^ Doping sabotage: Ben Johnson indicts Carl Lewis , Focus , December 6, 2006.
personal data
SURNAME Johnson, Ben
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Johnson, Benjamin Sinclair (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian sprinter of Jamaican origin
DATE OF BIRTH December 30, 1961
PLACE OF BIRTH Falmouth (Jamaica)