Disgraced Olympic sprinter Ben Johnson claims athletics is much dirtier now than in the 1980s when he was competing and says more funds must be given to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in order to counter the cheating epidemic that is taking over the sport.<\/p>\n
Johnson tested positive for stanozolol and was stripped of his gold medal in the 1988 Seoul Olympics in the 100m event \u2013 a race which has been dubbed the dirtiest race in the history of athletics, with six of the eight finalists all implicated in doping scandals.<\/p>\n
The Jamaican-born Canadian, who will be speaking today at the Sport Versus Crime conference in Dubai, has repeatedly said he had taken performance-enhancing drugs because everyone he was competing against at the time was doing it and he believed it was the only way to be on a level-playing field with his rivals.<\/p>\n
Still, Johnson insists athletics now is in a worse state, in terms of doping, than two decades ago when he was caught.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe sport is much dirtier now than it was then because there is greater prize money, greater sponsorship so the athletes see that and want to take a shortcut by taking performance-enhancing drugs or cheat \u2013 whatever you want to call it.<\/p>\n
“The people who are making these drugs are trying to stay ahead of the game of testing,\u201d Johnson told Sport360 yesterday ahead of the three-day conference, which will be held at the Rayhaan Rotana Hotel in Deira starting today.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut if the International Olympic Committee or the IAAF (athletics world governing body) give WADA more funding to watch this then you\u2019re going to see a lot more athletes testing positive and that\u2019s what we\u2019re trying to achieve. The money WADA is getting is not enough to do what they want to do.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe drugs I was taking is only used for recovery. The dosage I was using was very mild compared to what these guys are using now. These guys are using like four, five times what I was using, so you can tell that it\u2019s very dangerous and very widespread.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to official IAAF statistics, a total of 2,814 drug tests were conducted last year compared to just 820 back in 1990.<\/p>\n
There had been a series of failed drug tests by high-profile athletes during the lead-up to last August\u2019s World Championships in Moscow, including sprinters Tyson Gay, Asafa Powell and Veronica Campbell-Brown, and Johnson says it came as no surprise to him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not surprised (these people got caught),\u201d he added. \u201cBut at the same time I\u2019m not going to point fingers now, I never pointed fingers then. I know what they\u2019re doing and it\u2019s just a matter of the word coming out when they test positive.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also says he wasn\u2019t shocked when Lance Armstrong was caught, adding: \u201cThe mistake he made was coming back. He should have taken his $75 million and enjoyed himself with his family. But he came back, and not just that, the way he treated people was wrong and that\u2019s his problem and that\u2019s what is really hurting him right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Johnson is currently the face of a new anti-doping campaign that urges athletes to \u201cchoose the right track\u201d. It is now 25 years since that tainted 100m sprint in Seoul and he claims he has moved on.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve accepted what happened. This is life, this is my adventure through life to make me stronger and to have that experience and knowledge,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I said yes to drugs, I didn\u2019t have a second opinion as a young child. I was very young when this thing occurred to me, I was like 21, 22 years old. If I had told my mother that this was said to me, she wouldn\u2019t have allowed it to happen. But I kept it to myself, I made my own choice. I won the Olympic Games, lost the gold medal, lost everything, changed my life completely.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow I want to send a message to the young generation, don\u2019t do the same thing I did 25 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Sport Versus Crime conference \u2013 organised by Dubai Police \u2013 starts today at 11:00 and features speakers from 27 countries, including Johnson and Dubai-based football legend Diego Maradona.<\/p>\n
Preuzeto sa sajta sport360.com
\nhttp:\/\/www.sport360.com\/other-sports\/ben-johnson-doping-athletics-worse-now-ever<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Disgraced Olympic sprinter Ben Johnson claims athletics is much dirtier now than in the 1980s when he was competing and says more funds must be given to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in order to counter the cheating epidemic that is taking over the sport. Johnson tested positive for stanozolol and was stripped of his … Ben Johnson: Doping in athletics worse now than ever<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-iz_medija"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adas.org.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adas.org.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adas.org.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adas.org.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adas.org.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1747"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.adas.org.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1747\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16966,"href":"https:\/\/www.adas.org.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1747\/revisions\/16966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adas.org.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adas.org.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adas.org.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}