At 4am, the telephone rang within the lodge room of Colin Hart, who was protecting the Seoul Olympics for The Solar.
“There is a main story about to interrupt”, Hart was advised. It was his first warning that one of many largest scandals within the historical past of sport was unfolding.
Shortly afterwards, BBC host Des Lynam delivered the bombshell information.
“I’ve simply been handed a chunk of paper,” he mentioned. “If it is proper, it’s going to be probably the most dramatic story out of those Olympics or maybe any others”.
Hart and his journalist room-mate sprang into motion.
“We’re each in our underpants, would you imagine it?” he recollects. “Dictating one of many best sports activities tales of the century.”
That story was about Ben Johnson, the Canadian sprinter whose bitter rivalry with Carl Lewis felt extra like one between two heavyweight boxers.
Johnson had simply powered to victory within the males’s 100m closing, smashing the world file with a time of 9.79 secs. However then he examined constructive for Stanozolol, a banned performance-enhancing steroid.
It wasn’t simply Johnson – there is a motive the 1988 males’s 100m closing has grow to be often called the ‘dirtiest race in historical past’. Six of the eight males that lined up that day have been linked with performance-enhancing medicine sooner or later of their careers.