Good question. So would you charlie…?
Excellent posts Charlie and Johnny!
Amateur Sport in Canada is a farce when it comes to funding/sponsoring athletes. Not only that the corporate sponsorship is lacking in comparison to the US as well.
The government does not appreciate that in order to be world class you need to pursue it full time. Be paid, have coaches, massage therapists, transportation budgets, housing plus a whole bunch of other stuff.
It pisses me off how this country treats its athletes…
I agree 100%. Canada needs to take example from some European countries and their system, b/c it just works. It seems like we can’t take care of our own, but when one fortunate individual is able to break free from these restrictions and develop themself into a world class champion (ie. Donovan Bailey), Canada rediculously is ready to say, “See!! we produce the best atheltes in the world”…what a joke.
Here is the latest-
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7713-972435,00.html
Athletics
January 22, 2004
It’s no joke: lawyer tries to sell Seoul rerun to athletes who raced in tainted final
By Owen Slot
“HELLO. You’re calling from England? Really? Are you enjoying a nice cup of tea?” The voice is deep, transatlantic and clown-like. “You make sure you say hello to the Queen for me. And tell the people in Britain to tune in on July 31 and they can watch it on the telly. That’ll be Ben Johnson and all the eight from the 1988 Olympic final back in Seoul. This race is serious, it isn’t a joke. They’ll all be there. I ’m telling you, it’s for real.”
Meet Morris Chrobotek, Toronto lawyer and the last man to attempt to prove Johnson’s innocence. That may not be the most credible vantage point from which to start but it is Chrobotek who swears that in the Seoul Olympic stadium this summer, three weeks before the Olympic 100 metres final in Athens, he will be staging a rerun of athletics’ darkest moment, with $2 million (about £1.1 million) of prize-money awaiting the winner.
Believe him? There are two million reasons not to — and that is even before you go into the ethics of turning the most infamous crime in the history of sport into a seven-figure circus. Yet when Chrobotek says that seven of the eight are in training, he is spot on. Linford Christie is training, but that is because he has never stopped. Carl Lewis could not be less interested in serious exercise, but the other six have signed up to the gig and are out there pounding the track.
“I’ve given him my word,” Ray Stewart, who was promoted from eighth to seventh in that 1988 final after Johnson’s positive drugs test, said. “The last I spoke to him (Chrobotek) was last Friday. It’s a chance to make some extra money. And I’m in good shape. I still play Tuesdays and Fridays in the Fort Worth soccer league.”
“I’d love to do it,” Dennis Mitchell, who moved from fifth to fourth, said. “It’ll give me the chance to run again and it’ll be fun. I’ve talked to the organisers and they’ve sent contracts out. As far as I’m concerned, it’s happening.”
“I think it’s a good thing and I’m excited about it,” Calvin Smith, who was shunted up into the bronze-medal position, said. Smith started training again a month ago and is looking for a pre-Seoul schedule of track meets to get race fit.
“I have yet to find out the full details of Seoul and it has to be worth my time,” he said, “but it’s less (about) the money than it is the opportunity to run against these guys again. Drugs gave us the wrong result in Seoul. I’ll be going in with a type of revenge in my mind — to prove who is the best.”
Also signed up are Desai Williams, Johnson’s old Canada team-mate, Robson da Silva, the Brazilian, and, of course, Johnson himself. The plan, according to Chrobotek at least, is that they will line up in the same lanes as 16 years ago, that $2 million will go to the winner, $1 million to second place, $500,000 to third, with the rest receiving appearance money only. He is also looking to line up an undercard of events — “something else that has a sentimental feel to it”. “It’s funny,” he added, “but a lot of the athletes are saying, ‘I’m not running unless everyone’s drugs-tested.’ ”
Funny indeed, but more on that later. There will be some athletics fans who will have already put this newspaper down in search of the sick bag. Others will claim that this event could not possibly happen and, without Lewis or Christie, they would almost certainly be right. But Chrobotek is quite chipper about Christie because, after Christie’s initial public refusal, he claims that they have begun negotiating.
The news from Nuff Respect, Christie’s management company, is that they spoke to Chrobotek twice last week. “Linford, at the moment, is not participating,” was the word two days ago. “We haven’t had any more information on what is involved. The situation hasn’t changed. In a couple of weeks, maybe it will.”
Lewis, who always claimed the moral high ground, will surely be the toughest signature of all, especially with Joe Douglas, his manager, saying that “the possibility of this race happening are one in a million”. Yet, at the same time, Douglas disclosed that Chrobotek had been sending him e-mails. “He’s been in touch, but the terms were nothing I was happy with,” Douglas said. Which suggests that Lewis could, perhaps, be bought? “If someone were to present him with a business situation that was acceptable, he might.”
Encouraging, then, but Douglas makes two further points. One: “Carl’s always fit, but he’s not training and he’s had a fungus in his lungs, so he hasn’t done anything for two months.” Two: “Even if Carl wanted to do it, I’d tell him not to. He’s moved on with his life. As he said to me: ‘Joe, I’m an actor, not a runner any more.’ ”
So will it happen? Maybe. But while Chrobotek is not short on conversation, the identity of his mystery South Korean backers is one topic he will not discuss. Come to the press conference in New York in February, he says, and all will be revealed.
Not that everyone will necessarily be convinced by the appearance of rich backers: a new event in Russia last September, The Moscow Challenge, boasted the biggest ever prize-fund ($2 million) for a single night of athletics, yet one or two of the larger prizes have still not been received.
Even if the money is forthcoming, credibility is not. The IAAF, the sport’s world governing body, views the event as some grotesque joke and has refused to sanction it; given that Johnson is serving a lifetime ban, it could hardly do otherwise. This might make the venue a problem; the Koreans are lobbying to host the 2009 World Championships and are likely to profit more from that than a single illicit night with Johnson. “No problem,” Chrobotek said. “We’ll go to Japan or Las Vegas instead.”
One splendid irony here is that drug testing is an area in which he seeks to boost public acceptance. He has secured Dr Wade Exum, the former US Olympic Committee (USOC) director of drug control, to conduct testing. A celebrity dope-tester for celebrity dopes.
But here is the rub. It was Exum’s world-shattering revelations last April that suggested (although it was subsequently disproved) that Lewis had failed a pre-Seoul drugs test and had benefited from a cover-up. And, of course, from the line-up of that 1988 final, Lewis had been one of the minority untainted by drugs. Last August, a similar story emerged. It transpired that Jerome Young, the American 400 metres runner, had tested positive for a banned substance before the Sydney Olympics but had been cleared on appeal for reasons that the USATF, the American athletics federation, has never publicly been forced to explain. Young, it so happens, is coached by Stewart. We know that Johnson, Christie, Mitchell and Williams have served drugs bans, so, putting Lewis to one side, that leaves only Smith and Da Silva standing.
Now leap ahead to last weekend, when the Los Angeles Times reported that the USATF, had been so belligerent in keeping back information on the Young case that the USOC was withholding $3 million (about £1.6million) of its funding as a form of punishment. Indeed, the USOC is so exasperated with its top athletics administrators that it has taken the petty but significant step of announcing that it will be refused accreditation to this summer’s Athens Olympics.
Thus has the storyline remained unchanged. Athletics has just endured its worst year for doping scandals since Johnson; 16 years on, we are still embroiled in tales of cover-ups.
If the sport had moved on, if Johnson’s was a case of ancient history, maybe it would be possible to accept a 1988 rerun as a form of grotesque, nostalgic entertainment. Instead, we are left asking how Stewart can embrace so tainted an event when Young, his athlete, is simultaneously attempting to prove his innocence. How can Mitchell embrace it when he is coach to — and presumably setting an example to — young athletes? How can Smith embrace it when he swears that it was the drugs that denied him glory? One answer is obviously money. The other reflects dismally on the sport: the fact that a positive drugs finding is such small currency today that some of the most famous athletes of yesteryear are prepared to profit from it.
Chrobotek, naturally, believes that he has the answers. “Some people will approve of it, some will not,” he said. “But everyone will watch it. And tell the Queen that she’ll be invited. Actually, Princess Anne. Isn’t she involved in the Olympics? I’ll invite her, too.”
BET ON IT
2-1 Dennis Mitchell
3-1 Ray Stewart
5-1 Linford Christie
6-1 Robson Da Silva
8-1 Ben Johnson
10-1 Carl Lewis
12-1 Calvin Smith
12-1 Desai Williams
Odds supplied by Ladbrokes
Looks like it really is on, for a reported 1 million prize fund, It was reported today in the people newspaper here in the uk. Though it was titled “sprint for drug money end of athletics”
I had to laugh at Calvin Smith’s comments. “…to prove who is the best”
Has anyone heard any updates regarding this race??