And, somehow it's fitting that it isn't a Canadian source that's reporting it. Actually, the Times Online article might be the most conspiracy theory sympathetic article ever written.
"...Neverthless, it is curious that a friend of the athlete who had the most to gain in financial and prestige terms from Johnson being found positive should have been sitting with the Canadian as he was drinking liquid in an attempt to provide the urine specimen, the result of which would be the biggest sports story of our time."
André Jackson. An American. Who was friends with Carl Lewis.
I Want To Believe*
*but it should be noted that Ben has a book coming out and he might want to leak stories to British newspapers to make a few extra pounds.
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3 comments:
wow. i want to believe as well.
This makes me want to hurl. 20 years after the fact, some lame conspiracy theory gets fleshed out right in time to sell some books? Spare me. Ben Johnson was so dumb he got caught cheating AGAIN in 1993.
There is one absolute golden rule in sports -- drug cheats lie about their drug use. It doesn't matter if it's Ben Johnson, Rafael Palmeiro, Roger Clemens, or some discus thrower you have never heard of. When they get caught, they lie. I forget the name of the woman now, but there was a Canadian athlete, a shotputter or discus thrower, who got caught a few years ago and has been on this eye-rolling crusade ever since to "clear her name". Her excuse? You got it, the old, "someone spiked my supplement" story. That always comes right after the, "the test was wrong" story has fallen apart.
Every time I hear these, I know how parents of teenagers feel when they are given the old, "I'm just holding it for a friend" line. The fact that you are expected to swallow such an egregious lie is far more insulting than the original crime might have been.
I would have way more respect for these guys if they would just come out and say, "Yeah, I did it. Everyone else was doing it, so it was either take the drugs, or finish ninth. I wasn't going to give up my competitive edge when no one else was giving up theirs." That would at least be honest, and I could respect that. I have a hard time respecting those who lie to my face.
Denis,
I understand where you are coming from. To be clear, Johnson is not denying that he was juiced. His claim is that they caught him for a drug he wasn't taking and that Jackson was the one who put it there.
What keeps me interested in this story is not a desire to see Johnson cleared, but rather questions I have about why it was just Ben that was caught. To me, especially in the light that other positive tests were ignored, including one on Lewis just before the Games, the idea that Johnson was picked as a scapegoat to send a message to the rest of the field isn't that far fetched.
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