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Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Sprint legend Michael Johnson: Only a few will cheat in sport

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20130131

Four-time Olympic gold medal­list Michael John­son is of the view that the ze­ro-tol­er­ance pol­i­cy re­lat­ing to the use of per­for­mance en­hanc­ing drugs in sport should be re­moved, since not all ath­letes il­le­gal­ly as­pire to ma­nip­u­late their path­way to vic­to­ry.

"You are nev­er go­ing to com­plete­ly erad­i­cate drugs from sport, just like you are nev­er go­ing to com­plete­ly erad­i­cate crime in so­ci­ety. We do every­thing we can to erad­i­cate crime from so­ci­ety, but we know that some peo­ple are still go­ing to take the short cut. Some peo­ple are still go­ing to take that short cut and get some­thing they don't de­serve or get some­thing for noth­ing," he said.

John­son, the nine-time world cham­pi­on and world record-hold­er, was re­spond­ing to a ques­tion from the me­dia about the hu­mil­i­a­tion of Tour de France cy­clist Lance Arm­strong, who has been stripped of all ti­tles and banned for life for be­ing part of one of the world's most so­phis­ti­cat­ed dop­ing scan­dals.

Yes­ter­day's press con­fer­ence, held at the Hilton Trinidad in Port-of-Spain, was to an­nounce that his com­pa­ny, Michael John­son Per­for­mance Cen­tre, based in the Unit­ed States, was part­ner­ing with en­er­gy-com­pa­ny bpTT and the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) to pro­vide elite train­ing for three na­tion­al ath­letes, all with Olympic ex­pe­ri­ence. They are cy­clist Njisane Phillip, hur­dler Je­hue Gor­don and Par­a­lympic ath­lete Shan­tol Ince.

"Sport is on­ly a mi­cro­cosm of so­ci­ety, so we are al­ways go­ing to have those few peo­ple in sports that are go­ing to cheat, but it's just like so­ci­ety: it's on­ly a few peo­ple. We high­light it in sport be­cause we have a ze­ro-tol­er­ance pol­i­cy in sport. We don't want any­one cheat­ing.

"Sport is what we are pas­sion­ate about, it touch­es every­one's lives. You're ei­ther played it; you're a fan; you're in­volved in it (in) some type of way: sports touch­es every­one's lives! It brings peo­ple to­geth­er. Sport is ex­treme­ly pow­er­ful so we don't want peo­ple to cheat in sport. Most peo­ple don't (cheat), but we high­light it be­cause it is so im­por­tant to us," he said.

John­son said if some­one broke the world record in the dis­cus throw at present it would not make the news in the US, be­cause no one cares about the dis­cus throw in sports, but if that same per­son test­ed pos­i­tive, that would be the head­lines in the news­pa­per.

Dur­ing the me­dia con­fer­ence, John­son re­flect­ed on the tri­als dur­ing his ca­reer which not many peo­ple knew about, cit­ing that they were too con­sumed by his suc­cess.

"Peo­ple know about the suc­cess, but it was not an easy jour­ney for me. In 1988, the ear­ly part of that sea­son was a break out year for me. In a span of two weeks I ran the fastest time in the world in the 200 and 400 me­tres. I ran 10.07 for the 100m. I nev­er ran faster than that for the 100. I ful­ly be­lieve that I would have made our (USA) team had I not got­ten in­jured.

"By 1992, I had spent two years ranked num­ber one in the world in the 200m and 400m and right be­fore the Olympics (1992), I con­tract­ed food poi­son­ing and was not able to make it in­to the fi­nals. That was very dif­fi­cult, ob­vi­ous­ly, to deal with, but I be­lieved in my abil­i­ty. I be­lieved in my tal­ent. It was proven," he said.

John­son said he al­ways re­calls be­ing on the flight back from the Olympics in Barcelona and ag­o­nis­ing over the cir­cum­stances re­lat­ing to his un­suc­cess­ful medal bid in the 200m.

"I re­mem­ber think­ing at that time that I had on­ly lost one race in two years. It was the most im­por­tant one, but it was the on­ly one. I'm still that ath­lete that I've al­ways been. You have to be ar­ro­gant to get over those humps, but I thought all of the peo­ple who won those medals have nev­er beat­en me be­fore, so why should I give up now.

"Once that was over, I start­ed to fo­cus on the next goal. I have al­ways been mo­ti­vat­ed by my goals. At­lanta had al­ready been award­ed the 1996 Olympics and I planned to make his­to­ry in my own coun­try, and that worked out pret­ty well," he said.

John­son an­chored the US 4 x 400m re­lay team with Jerome Young, An­to­nio Pet­ti­grew, and Tyree Wash­ing­ton to a win and set a world record of 2:54.20 at the 1998 Good­will Games in New York. Pet­ti­grew has since ad­mit­ted dop­ing from 1997, while Young was caught dop­ing in 1999. The world record was an­nulled by the IAAF in Au­gust 2008, and re­vert­ed to the time of 2:54:29 which John­son helped set in the 1993 World Cham­pi­onships.

In June 2008, John­son vol­un­tar­i­ly re­turned the 4 x 400m re­lay gold medal he earned in the 2000 Olympics af­ter Pet­ti­grew, who ran the sec­ond leg, ad­mit­ted he took per­for­mance en­hanc­ing drugs be­tween 1997 and 2001.

Three of the four run­ners in the event fi­nal, in­clud­ing Pet­ti­grew and twins Alvin and Calvin Har­ri­son, and pre­lim­i­nary round run­ner Young, all have ad­mit­ted or test­ed pos­i­tive for per­for­mance en­hanc­ing drugs. On­ly John­son and An­ge­lo Tay­lor, who al­so ran in pre­lim­i­nary rounds, were not im­pli­cat­ed. John­son had al­ready re­turned his medal be­cause, as he said, he felt the medal was not won fair­ly.


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