Word: johnson
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...them medalists, were ejected from the Games for drug abuses. Before the Seoul Games began, several Americans, including '84 cycling gold medalist Steve Hegg and national swimming champion Angel Myers, were bounced for banned substances. But no disqualification has ever rocked the sporting world the way the Ben Johnson scandal...
...hard to recall any that has been so passionately denounced. In Canada, a country that was delighting in its first gold medal of the Games, outrage abounded. Canadian Sports Minister Jean Charest announced the draconian penalty of banning Johnson from ever representing Canada on a national team again, calling the incident a "national embarrassment." Many saw the sprinter as pitiable, and some, like I.O.C. vice president Richard Pound, believed he had been duped as well as doped, saying, "Johnson probably wouldn't know what a steroid is." But across Canada spread a sense of bewilderment and anger...
Around the world, Johnson's disqualification suddenly riveted public attention on the decades-old problem of performance-enhancing drug use with an altogether new intensity. By week's end the total of ten drug-related disqualifications in Seoul was close to the 1984 figure. But many thought: If this world-record holder would risk detection, everyone must be doing it. Spectators felt deceived and non-using athletes felt gypped. Overnight the Olympics became clouded, suspected of being an unholy chemistry competition rather than the glorious alchemy of will, talent and training that is its ideal...
...into massive competitive machines and aid muscle growth in adults. Stories circulate about puberty suppressants that allow gymnasts to keep their finely balanced girlish bodies. But no drugs pose as much of a threat to the fairness and legitimacy of athletic competition as anabolic steroids do. And as the Johnson scandal shows, nothing has so obscured the efforts of honest athletes or has contributed as much shame to the Games...
...conduct research that would in any way condone a practice they consider unhealthy. Athletes have fewer doubts. Dr. Forest Tennant, a California researcher, estimated in the New England Journal of Medicine that "as many as 1 million athletes" in the U.S. alone are using anabolic steroids. Sprinters like Johnson, who rely on large muscles for bursts of power, are believed to be turning more and more to steroids. In football, the remarkable rise in the size and strength of linemen is often attributed to extensive steroid use. In weight lifting and bodybuilding, steroid consumption is pandemic...