He slowly walked toward the finish line at a much more sedate pace than the world record 9.79sec it took to cover the 100m a quarter-of-a-century ago as campaign organisers helped reveal a scroll petition, signed by 1,000 people, collated from his earlier stops and which is due to be presented to the International Olympic Committee and the World Anti-Doping Agency. 

The bitterness Johnson clearly still feels spewed out of him afterwards. 

"I did something wrong, and I got punished," he said.

"Twenty-five years later, I am still being punished for what I did.

"People who commit murders go to jail and get out.

"I broke a rule in sports, and I got a nail in the cross.

"I am trying to send a message that there has got to be a fair game.

"No mother wants to see her son or daughter go through what I went through for 25 years, because it's not good mentally and physically."

Much of Johnson's bitterness stems from the fact that he believes he competed on a level-playing field in that race and that many of his rivals were also taking banned performance-enhancing drugs, a fact borne out by history. 

Six of the eight runners in the Seoul 1988 Olympic 100 metres have been linked to drugs since Ben Johnson was disqualified after crossing the line first

Six of the eight runners in that final, including Johnson, have since been linked to drugs, earning the event the sobriquet "The dirtiest race in history".

Among those implicated in drugs scandals since Seoul 1988 have been Carl Lewis, the American upgraded to the gold medal after Johnson's disqualification, who it later emerged had tested positive for banned stimulants before the United States Olympic trials but was controversially cleared.

Linford Christie, the Briton who moved up to silver after Johnson was caught, meanwhile, narrowly avoided being banned himself in Seoul after testing positive for a stimulant he claimed he had ingested in a ginseng tea only to be suspended for two years in 1999 after failing a drugs test for the anabolic steroid nandrolone.

Ben Johnson, on his visit to the Jamsil Olympic Stadium in Seoul, studies the 1,000 people that have signed the anti-doping petition organised by sportswear company SKINS that will be presented to the International Olympic Committee and World Anti-Doping Agency 
"I do believe that most of the runners in that race were on drugs, and they tested positive over the years," Johnson said. 

"I don't set the rules in the situation.

"I am just a guy in a small pond, just trying to survive, so to speak.

"There was too much politics and too much money involved.

"Where there's money, there's corruption."

Contact the writer of this story at [email protected]


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