"The Dirtiest Race in History"

The image is burned in the mind of everyone who saw it. It was the 100m final at the Seoul Olympics and a muscular Ben Johnson impetuously raised his right arm and powered ahead of the greatest 100m field ever assembled (video). We looked astonishingly at the stopped timer on the bottom right of the screen showing 9.79 seconds- a new world record. For the first time in history, four runners in the same race had run under 10 seconds.

Even more stunning news came two days later when Ben Johnson was unceremoniously stripped of his gold medal and the world record. He instantly became the black hole of all criticism, becoming the poster child of everything wrong with world athletics. Only now, we know that 5 of the 8 finalists failed a drug test and Carl "zero tolerance" Lewis himself should have been banned for two years for testing positive for stimulants at the US Olympic trials two months earlier. Linford Christie tested positive along with Dennis Mitchel and Desai Williams.

It appears however, that the US Olympic Committee did not apply the same standards it expected of the rest of the world. It appears the only reason US athletes did not get caught back then was because the USOC covered up for them. And the only reason we know this is that the former head of US anti-doping programme became a whistle blower and chose to release 30,000 pages of documents a few years ago.

It is in this light that Carl Lewis' latest rant casting aspersions on Usain Bolt are especially bothersome. After questioning Bolt's improvement, he went on to proclaim, “I’m proud of America right now because we have the best random and most comprehensive drug-testing programme. Countries like Jamaica do not have a random programme, so they can go months without being tested. No one is accusing Bolt, but don’t live by a different rule and expect the same kind of respect. How dare anybody feel that there shouldn’t be scrutiny, especially in our sport?”

Where was Carl Lewis when all the Americans were winning the sprints? Where was Carl Lewis when Americans (including himself) were testing positive and the USOC was shielding them? Where was Carl Lewis when the Balco scandal broke? When Justin Gatlin and then Tim Montgomery and Marion Jones returned their three Olympic golds for testing positive. Was that in Jamaica? Where has Carl Lewis been?