New book looks at career and legacy of Canadian athlete Ben Johnson

Mary Ormsby has followed Ben Johnson’s career for decades, seeing how his legacy and public perception has evolved and, at the same time, not changed that much.

“Today people will stop Ben in the street and say, ‘Hey, World’s Fastest Man,’” Ormsby said in an interview with CTV News Atlantic’s Todd Battis on Monday. “It doesn’t seem to matter what happened because we’re more educated as a public.”

Johnson, representing Canada, made international headlines at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, Korea, when he won a gold medal in track and field, only to be stripped of the honour for steroid use. Ormsby, who has written “The Incredible Life of Ben Johnson: World’s Fastest Man,” said Johnson is “responsible for producing the greatest high and the greatest low in Olympic history.”

Ormsby said she stayed in touch with Johnson for years after the scandal, and while he admitted to using performance enhancing drugs, he mentioned missed details from the case that piqued Ormsby’s curiosity. She started looking closely at the entire incident and realized there was more to the story than she originally thought.

“My research showed he was denied due process during his hearing in Seoul,” Ormsby said. “Because of that I thought it could be expanded to a book.

“Can you railroad a guilty man? It’s a complicated story.”

Ormsby said Johnson is still angry about losing his medal as he maintains other athletes were using performance enhancing drugs and were simply not caught.

“This was the 1980s and enforcement wasn’t strong, compliance of testing wasn’t all that strong, there was no random testing,” she said. “It was a bit of a wild time. I think back then people might have known what steroids were but we were naïve.”

Ormsby said Johnson leaves behind a complicated legacy, but an important one in Canadian sports history.

“He also shook up how Canadians and the world view doping in sport,” she said. “I think that’s kind of his legacy.”