This is no surprise to those of us who’ve read all the articles at T-mag, especially those by Charlie Francis, but I suppose the rest of the world is shocked by this. From Yahoo News:
(AFP) - Carl Lewis, who amassed nine Olympic gold medals in a glittering career, was one of 19 American athletes who failed a drugs test in the run-up to the 1988 Games in Seoul, according to a report. Lewis was still allowed to take part in the Olympics and inherited the 100m gold medal after Canada’s Ben Johnson was stripped of his victory for failing a dope test in the aftermath of the race.
I looked further into this and he wasn’t popped for steroids but for stimulants. Still, the insiders say that flunked drug tests are routinely supressed for big star athletes. BAU - Business As Usual.
I don’t know if this is true, but I heard from a former member of the Olympic Team that Carl Lewis had purchased a $600,000 unit that he could perform his own drug tests on to make sure the anabolics were not detectable before entering any meets. I’m not claiming this is the case, but this is what I heard from someone who had some inside info. And by the way, I hope this “news” doesn’t take away from the fact that Carl Lewis is one of the greatest all-round athletes ever.
I agree, Carl Lewis still is one of the greatest athletes of all time. I also hope that Ben Johnson gets some of the glory he has always deserved.
BTW, if I read it correctly, the article said that 14 athletes also had supressed drug test results. Did I read that, or was that my imagination? Anyone know if those names will come out?
cnn.com had a good article about it, and they posted a few more names, 5 maybe. If any athlete gets busted for stimulants, all they have to claim is “I had a cold and took cold medicine and I didn’t know…” blah blah bullshit. It’s so unfair how those athletes get off the hook for illegal shit.
On a similar topic,I was reading about the 84 games in LA and apparently there were lots of positive drug tests,that were just hushed up.The article indirectly named Lewis as being one of those involved by saying “one of the biggest stars was caught out”.
An explanation as to why theses tests were not made public,was that with a lot of countries already boycotting the games(Soviets,East Europeans etc)the IOC did not need any further negative publicity.