Ben Johnson stripped of Olympic gold

1988NotableContested

Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson wins the Seoul 100m in a world-record 9.79 seconds, then tests positive for stanozolol. Canada's Dubin Inquiry exposes widespread steroid use in elite sport.

Longest chain: The Big Bang → First stars ignite → Supernovae seed heavy elements → The Sun forms → Earth forms → First oceans → First life → Photosynthesis evolves → Great Oxidation Event → Complex cells (eukaryotes) → Multicellular life → First animals → Cambrian Explosion → First vertebrates → Jawed fish → Fish walk onto land → The amniotic egg → The Great Dying → Dinosaurs appear → Asteroid ends the dinosaurs → Early primates → Apes split from monkeys → Human line splits from chimpanzees → Walking upright → First stone tools → Genus Homo appears → Homo erectus → Control of fire → First fired clay figures → First pottery → Copper smelting → Bronze Age begins → Minoan palaces on Crete → Mycenaean Greece → First recorded Olympic Games → Modern Olympic Games → Ben Johnson stripped of Olympic gold

Contested history

Consensus: Ben Johnson used anabolic steroids, as he and his coach admitted under oath at Canada's Dubin Inquiry in 1989.

Johnson ran on a systematic steroid programEstablished

Coach Charlie Francis and Johnson testified to years of steroid use timed to beat tests.

His Seoul positive was caused by sabotage of his sampleUnsupported

Johnson says he was not using stanozolol; a 2018 Toronto Star report found irregularities in the lab report, but no evidence of tampering has been shown.