The Dirtiest Race In History Sampler

· The first book to be written about the most infamous race in Olympic history · Containing remarkable new insights, with witness interviews with Ben Johnson, Carl Lewis and Calvin Smith · Publishing just ahead of the 2012 Olympics, and at a time when the media spotlight is, once again, on the subject of drugs in sport · Richard Moore is an award-winning sports writer with several books to his name including In Search of Robert Millar and Slaying the Badger The men’s 100m final at the 1988 Seoul Olympics has been described as the dirtiest race ever – but also the greatest. Aside from Johnson’s blistering time, the race is infamous for its athletes’ positive drug test. This is the story of that race, the rivalry between Johnson and Lewis, and the repercussions still felt almost a quarter of a century on.

Contains remarkable new insights into the most infamous race of all time

This book uses witness interviews – with Johnson, Lewis and Smith among others – to reconstruct the build-up to the race, the race itself, and the fallout when news of Johnson’s positive test broke and he was forced into hiding. It also examines the rivalry of the two favourites going into it, and puts the race in a historical context, examining its continuing relevance on the sport today, where every new record elicits scepticism.

P U B LI CAT I O N J U N E 2 0 1 2 Hardback 153 x 234mm · 978 1 4081 3595 2 · £18.99 eBook 978 1 4081 7111 0 · £18.99

Henry Jeffreys, Senior Publicity Manager henry.jeffreys@bloomsbury.com · 020 7631 5718 All trade orders to MDL, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hants, RG21 6XS Tel: +44 (0) 1256 302 692; Fax +44 (0) 1256 812 521; orders@macmillan.co.uk This is an uncorrected proof copy and is not for sale. All specifications are provisional. It should not be quoted without comparison to the finally revised text. This does not reflect the quality, page size or thickness of the finished text.

www.bloomsbury.com

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U N C O R R E C T E D S A M P L E PA G E S

W I S DE N

S P ORT S

W R I T I NG

07/March/2012 15:43

The Dirtiest

Race in History Ben Johnson, Carl Lewis

and the Olympic 100m Final

Richard Moore

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To Virginie

First published in Great Britain 2012 Copyright Š 2012 by Richard Moore The moral right of the author has been asserted.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the Publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Every reasonable effort has been made to trace copyright holders of material reproduced in this book, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers would be glad to hear from them. For legal purposes the list of illustrations on page [TK] constitutes an extension of the copyright page.

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP www.bloomsbury.com Bloomsbury Publishing, London, New York, Berlin and Sydney A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 9781408135952 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Typeset by seagulls.net Printed in Great Britain by XXXX

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contents

The Quest vii Prologue 1 Part One: Carl and Ben 1. The Santa Monica Track Club 00 2. Picking Daisies 00 3. Ben and Charlie 00 4. The Quiet One 00 5. The Roots of Evil 00 6. Wanna be Startin’ Somethin’ 00 7. The Prince and the Missing Paperwork 00 Part Two: Rivals 8. Lewis 8, Johnson 1 00 9. Big Ben and King Carl 00 Part Three: Seoul 10. Dodging 00 11. The Glasnost Games 00 12. Sweating it Out 00 13. The Human Bullet 00 14. Deny, Deny, Deny 00 15. The Mystery Man 00 Epilogue: ‘Different era, different time zone, same thing’ 00 Where are they now? 00 Appendices 00 Bibliography and Further Reading 00 Acknowledgements 00

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the quest

This is a story mainly about four extraordinary men: Ben Johnson, Carl Lewis, Charlie Francis and Joe Douglas. Johnson and Douglas were both willing interviewees and could not have been more helpful.

Francis, Johnson’s coach, died in 2010. And Lewis, well, he proved so elusive that the title almost became In Search of Carl Lewis.

I tried to contact him through his agent, who, in the course of my efforts, became his ex-agent. I tried his sister-in-law, who acts as his manager; she didn’t return emails or phone calls. I tried friends. But finally I met him: in a shop on Oxford Street in London. It was a strange, though somehow fitting, encounter.

A word about the title, too – the dirtiest race in history? I mean this in the broadest sense, referring not only to drugs, but also to varying degrees of skulduggery and corruption, and the enduring legacy of the Olympic 100m final in Seoul. There are those who take a more ambiguous, even ambivalent, view. It was the greatest race of all time, they say. And perhaps it was.

‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity.’

A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

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prologue

the greatest race of all time?

‘The stars of track and field are beautiful people.’

Belle and Sebastian

Seoul, Saturday 24 September 1988, 1.20 p.m.

Ben Johnson, hands on hips, stares at the track ahead of him, his pose giving him a studied casualness, which is in contrast to the lowered head, squinting eyes and dilated pupils. His expression suggests he is staring not at a hundred-metre stretch of rubberised track, but at someone who has just challenged him to a fight.

Johnson relaxes as he paces a few strides down the track. He slowly rolls his enormous shoulders and shakes out his limbs, then turns and returns to his blocks. As he reaches them, a figure approaches from behind.

The figure is Carl Lewis. In the warm-up area and now out on the track, Lewis has been making his way around all the other Olympic 100m finalists, shaking each opponent’s hand, looking him in the eye.

Whatever happens out there, guys, the gesture seems designed to say, we’re still friends.

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the dirtiest race in history

But as far as Johnson is concerned, they’re not friends. Lewis, proffering his hand, appears to catch him unawares. Johnson halfturns and returns the gesture, but he doesn’t meet Lewis’s gaze, and he instantly regrets the handshake. As he would later explain, ‘I don’t shake nobody’s hand. We’re not friends. I’m coming here to win. Carl is just trying to soften them up.’

Lewis returns to his lane: lane three. He peels off his all-white tracksuit. Johnson, in lane six, removes a pale yellow T-shirt. Underneath, both wear red shorts and vests: Johnson’s kit is all red, like a British post box, Lewis has a white trim. Johnson’s thick gold necklace doesn’t hang around his neck; rather, it is laid out on his muscular chest. The race is between Lewis of the United States and Johnson of Canada; the other six are extras, with walk-on, non-speaking parts.

It’s the contrast between the pair that makes the race so intriguing and their rivalry so beguiling. That and their mutual dislike. Johnson is rough; Lewis is smooth. Johnson exudes menace: he is a boxer, or a bull. Lewis is a butterfly: sleek, graceful, soft-featured. In the weeks leading up to the Olympics he had appeared on television in the guise of a pop star, dressed in a bright red and gold lamé outfit, dancing – but awkwardly, without the beautiful fluidity of his running – and singing, ‘He had a special gift that came from above He’s a star! He’s a star!’

Meanwhile, Johnson had been lying on a beach on the Caribbean island of St Kitts, eating and drinking, putting on weight and arguing with his coach as he recovered from an injury that had threatened his participation in the Olympics. ‘The first time I ever enjoyed my life,’ Johnson would wistfully recall more than two decades later. ‘I had the best fun I ever had in my life on St Kitts before Seoul.’

Somehow, despite the competing distractions of making pop videos and lying on the beach, these two athletes have come together, in the

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best shape of their lives, as Lewis seeks to become the first man to successfully defend the Olympic 100m title, and Johnson bids to confirm himself as the fastest man in history. The American NBC commentary team of Charlie Jones and Frank Shorter agree that it is perhaps the first Olympic men’s 100m final ever to feature two sprinters so evenly matched and at the top of their game. It is why it is the most anticipated race in history.

And yet the men’s 100m final at the Seoul Olympics will surpass even that billing.

The psychological battle began in the warm-up area, before they even stepped on to the track. ‘The warm-up area is the place where you learn everything about athletics,’ says the British coach Frank Dick. Dick was helping the British sprinter, Linford Christie, but his attention was drawn to the American and Canadian camps. ‘What happens out there on the track is nothing. What happens in here is the important thing. You could see these guys playing their games, and their totally different approaches. The surliness of Johnson and the flamboyance of Lewis. They were like two prizefighters. Gladiators.

These were your heavyweight boxers. There was so much tension, it was… tingling.’

In the stadium, the noise is a thrum of nervous anticipation that manages to be low and high-pitched at the same time. It’s like a swarm of 90,000 bees, with regular bursts of clapping, and occasional yells of ‘Ben!’ or ‘USA!’ – never ‘Carl!’ The TV camera pans across the lanes. ‘In lane six, number 159, the world champion and world record holder, Ben Johnson, Canada,’ says the American-accented stadium announcer. Johnson gets the biggest cheer. ‘Once again we request quiet to start, please,’ adds the announcer when he has introduced the remaining two runners. The buzz drops an octave. The atmosphere is charged; as Dick says, it tingles.

The runners are called. They move forward in three waves: four step forward in the first group, led by the Canadian Desai Williams,

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the dirtiest race in history

all flared nostrils and pumped-up aggression, trailed by Calvin Smith, Dennis Mitchell and Christie; Robson da Silva, Raymond Stewart and Lewis appear a step behind; there’s a longer pause, then a solitary figure ambles forward. Johnson. It’s as though he is in a slightly different time zone.

Atten-hut! The Korean command, a call to attention. To your marks.

They settle in the blocks, Lewis digging his feet into the pedals like a climber ensuring he has a solid hold; Johnson still in his own time zone, the last man into the blocks, his shoulders appearing to force his arms out, so that his hands occupy the extreme corners of his lane. He twists rather than digs his feet into the blocks. ‘Who’s going to be last to settle?’ asks David Coleman, the BBC commentator. ‘Johnson’s not going to fall for this; the others know that Lewis tries to psych them out a bit.’

Lewis sits up on one knee, extending his long frame, gazing into the distance, his left arm resting on his thigh. He scratches his nose, then bows his head and looks down at the track. Johnson, more compact, closer to the track, settles. But, setting himself apart again, while all seven opponents’ heads are bowed as if in prayer, Johnson’s is tilted up, his dead eyes focused on the full length of the track.

Atten-hut! Set… hold…

BANG! Johnson lunges forward, throwing his arms behind him as though he is diving into water. While a wisp of smoke dissipates from the barrel of the starting pistol, he steals a foot on the rest of the field.

Now it’s the reverse image of the athletes’ walk to the blocks: seven form an even line, with Johnson still on his own, but now a step ahead, approaching full speed while Lewis is still unfolding.

‘And it’s a fair start!’ says Charlie Jones for NBC as they approach ten metres, Ben Johnson six-hundredths of a second up on Carl Lewis.

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Toronto, February 2011 ‘I was fifty years ahead of my time,’ says Ben Johnson, sounding both satisfied and bitter. ‘Usain Bolt now is doing stuff I was capable of doing. What he’s running on these fast tracks they’re building now, I could have run.’ He says it again, ‘I was fifty years ahead of my time.

Fifty years!’ And he laughs, as he would at a sick joke.

He has suffered from bouts of depression over the past 23 years, especially over the past decade, but they have eased and he is doing better now. Sinking deep into an armchair in a room in a suburban Toronto home, Johnson glances across at Bryan Farnum, a large man whose hands are crossed across his ample stomach. Farnum is Johnson’s spiritual adviser; he closes his eyes and nods slowly. ‘Ben’s doing well. His depression – the heaviness in his head – has completely gone.’

‘I feel more content,’ nods Johnson. ‘Peace of mind.’

But when it comes to discussing his relationship with Carl Lewis, Johnson doesn’t seem to have found peace of mind. In some respects he is still in the clutches of that old rivalry. Did he actually dislike Lewis? ‘Well, he was my rival, so if I’m going to beat somebody, I don’t want to be friends,’ Johnson explains. ‘He was the first and last major rival I had. The only one.

‘But I haven’t seen him in person for 20 years. I saw him once on TV, singing the national anthem.’

‘I saw Lewis recently,’ I tell Johnson.

‘How does he look?’

‘He looks quite well. He’s got some white hair.’

‘Some people say he looks very old.’

‘He moves a little stiffly,’ I say.

‘He moves stiffly.’ Johnson perks up. ‘What do you mean?’

‘A little bit jerkily.’

‘Like he’s in pain?’ asks Farnum. Johnson leans forward, listening intently.

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the dirtiest race in history

‘I told you he was having problems, Ben,’ Farnum says. ‘I discerned it. So Richard’s now confirmed that.’

Johnson sits back again. He looks satisfied.

‘Unbelievable! … NINE! … SEVEN! … NINE!’ Charlie Jones on NBC, his voice hoarse, screams as the clock stops.

As Johnson crosses the line, he glances to his left towards Lewis, with the gesture that forever encapsulates the race: right arm in the air, finger pointing to the sky. Lewis is a full two metres behind. Then Johnson turns towards the crowd, to accept their adulation.

The start had been extraordinary, but that isn’t the most remarkable thing about the hundred metres Johnson has just run; it is that for the rest of the race his lead kept expanding. For the last 10 metres Johnson has been celebrating, and yet he has finished in 9.79, chopping four-hundredths of a second from the world record – from his own world record.

‘And now – now – all the critics have been answered,’ says David Coleman, ‘there is no question about who is the fastest man in the world. Now he reigns supreme…’

‘That probably is the best 100m ever run, technically,’ says Frank Shorter. ‘The race is over at 50 metres. He has another gear that we have not seen, even last year.’

Lewis’s face crumples as he crosses the line and, as his jaw relaxes, he looks up and mouths something that seems less like a curse than a prayer. He resembles someone who has just witnessed a traumatic event: he looks on the verge of tears. In the second half of the race Lewis stole three separate glances at Johnson: at 65 metres, his head locked on to the human bullet and, as though in disbelief, he felt compelled to look again twice more in the closing 20 metres, when he would normally be closing the gap. Even while running the fastest 100m of his life, Lewis wore an anguished, horrified expression for much of it. Near the end he drifted to his right, towards his rival,

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as though Johnson exerted a magnetic pull. Later, the head-on angle would reveal that Lewis stepped clean outside his lane in the final 10 metres.

Beyond the line, Lewis jogs after Johnson, but the exchange between them – another half-turn, another handshake – is cursory.

Johnson doesn’t smile when he looks at him; if anything, his expression darkens. Lewis stares at the big screen in bewilderment as Johnson takes off on a lap of honour with a Canadian flag, and then the beaten man gives an interview to NBC. ‘I don’t feel it was the best race I ran here,’ says Lewis. ‘The only thing I can say is, I talked to my mother last night, she had a dream two nights ago that my father just said, “I’m all right,” and that’s all I feel, I gave it my best shot.’ His father, Bill, had died the previous year. Carl had buried him with the 100m gold medal he had won at the Los Angeles Olympics, as well as a promise that he would win himself a replacement in Seoul.

Had he not been aware of Johnson’s explosive start? ‘Well I didn’t see him until about 60 or 70 metres,’ replies Lewis, still visibly stunned, still anguished. ‘He must have really caught a flyer… I just tried to run the best I could and I… I’m pleased with my race.’

‘Well,’ Charlie Jones comes back in, as Lewis, head lowered, disappears into the bowels of the stadium. ‘The waiting is over, the questions have been answered.’

When he had finished his lap of honour, Johnson was asked which he treasured more – the world record or the gold medal. ‘The gold medal,’ he said, ‘because they can’t take that away from you.’

The news broke 55 hours later.

These were the days before the big TV channels would build an entire studio on-site, and present major events from whichever – invariably exotic – location they were staged. In Britain, the Olympic coverage was anchored in London, which lent a peculiar familiarity to events taking place in an unfamiliar setting, in a different time zone,

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the dirtiest race in history

and in such blazing heat that much of the footage had a hazy, otherworldly quality.

In contrast to events in Seoul, dapper Des Lynam, the BBC presenter famous for his smoothness and languid charm, sat in a brightly lit studio in Television Centre, presenting The Olympics Day. Few sights were as familiar and reassuring as that of Lynam, his calm, treacly voice, his grey hair and dark moustache. Today he wore a navy blue blazer and a stripy tie. A pale yellow silk handkerchief billowed from his pocket.

It was all so ordinary as we watched him being slipped a note by somebody off-screen, to his left. Lynam scanned the paper quickly.

Then he looked back up. He didn’t give much away, but his manner had changed in a subtle, barely discernible way. It was clear, in fact, that the impossible had happened: Lynam was ruffled. ‘Now,’ he said, looking directly into the camera. ‘I’ve just been handed a piece of paper here that if it’s right’ – he swallowed and shook his head solemnly – ‘it’ll be the most dramatic story out of these Olympics, or perhaps any others.’

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· The first book to be written about the most infamous race in Olympic history · Containing remarkable new insights, with witness interviews with Ben Johnson, Carl Lewis and Calvin Smith · Publishing just ahead of the 2012 Olympics, and at a time when the media spotlight is, once again, on the subject of drugs in sport · Richard Moore is an award-winning sports writer with several books to his name including In Search of Robert Millar and Slaying the Badger The men’s 100m final at the 1988 Seoul Olympics has been described as the dirtiest race ever – but also the greatest. Aside from Johnson’s blistering time, the race is infamous for its athletes’ positive drug test. This is the story of that race, the rivalry between Johnson and Lewis, and the repercussions still felt almost a quarter of a century on.

Contains remarkable new insights into the most infamous race of all time

This book uses witness interviews – with Johnson, Lewis and Smith among others – to reconstruct the build-up to the race, the race itself, and the fallout when news of Johnson’s positive test broke and he was forced into hiding. It also examines the rivalry of the two favourites going into it, and puts the race in a historical context, examining its continuing relevance on the sport today, where every new record elicits scepticism.

P U B LI CAT I O N J U N E 2 0 1 2 Hardback 153 x 234mm · 978 1 4081 3595 2 · £18.99 eBook 978 1 4081 7111 0 · £18.99

Henry Jeffreys, Senior Publicity Manager henry.jeffreys@bloomsbury.com · 020 7631 5718 All trade orders to MDL, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hants, RG21 6XS Tel: +44 (0) 1256 302 692; Fax +44 (0) 1256 812 521; orders@macmillan.co.uk This is an uncorrected proof copy and is not for sale. All specifications are provisional. It should not be quoted without comparison to the finally revised text. This does not reflect the quality, page size or thickness of the finished text.

www.bloomsbury.com

Dirtiest_Race_sampler_cover_R.indd 2-3

U N C O R R E C T E D S A M P L E PA G E S

W I S DE N

S P ORT S

W R I T I NG

07/March/2012 15:43