THE problem with the Ben Johnson case is that it doesn’t make sense. Even the experts were baffled when he was found positive in Seoul and many still are. Professor Arnold Beckett, the man in Seoul who confronted Johnson with the news that he had tested positive for stanozolol, remains perplexed. “When the A-sample came through, I could not believe it because Johnson knew that he was going to be tested,” he recalled. “It seemed ridiculous. Even now, I still do not understand how it happened and I don’t think that Charlie Francis does either.”

Indeed Francis doesn’t, but he believes that he is close to the truth. Francis, Johnson’s coach, the man known as Charlie the Chemist, doesn’t deny that Johnson was on a drugs programme, but denies vehemently that Johnson was on the quantity and type of drug for which he tested positive.

In his book Speed Trap Francis devotes a whole chapter to various theories as to how Johnson could possibly have tested positive. Cock-up or conspiracy? In the 13 years since he wrote the book, he has become convinced of the latter.

Dr Jamie Astaphan, the man who ran Johnson’s drugs programme, is in no doubt. “All the bulls*** that was covered up will come out soon,” he said. “There are no lines that connect the dots around all this. It’s like a scattergun. The enquiry that followed was dominated by a specific agenda. Where the stanozolol came from, if indeed it existed at all — it’s been one big cover-up from day one.”

Astaphan says that he will eventually tell all. “I have paid 15 years of penance for something I didn’t do, and the people that did do it have gone on and got on with their lives,” he said. “I’m going to mention everybody’s name from the top down: officials, athletes, governments, everybody. A lot of people are afraid because of their positions. I don’t give a damn about positions. It’s time it stopped. They wrecked Ben’s life and they wrecked Charlie’s life and I don’t like it. Everybody broke the rules. Why pick on one or two?

“How would I have information on the other athletes? Because they all came to me. Plenty of them. I was making sure they weren’t doing it (doping) wrong and damaging themselves. That was Charlie’s main concern when he brought them to me. He didn’t want to see anybody getting hurt.”

Why does Johnson’s positive test for stanozolol not make sense?

1) Because stanozolol would not have helped to enhance performance. If anything, it would have hindered it. Stanozolol is a steroid that helps to build muscle; a cheat would use a steroid in the months pre-competition, never during competition. Johnson’s high level of stanozolol suggests that he took it in the immediate days before racing.

2) Because while Johnson’s entire camp later acknowledged that they were guilty of following a finely prescribed drugs programme, they said that it was furazobol they were on, not stanozolol.

3) Because even if, by some massive mistake, Johnson’s camp had been giving him stanozolol instead of furazobol as intended, they all say that Johnson had his last shot on August 28, 26 days before the final. It would have taken 14 days for it to clear his system.

4) Because later laboratory tests showed that the stanozolol in Johnson’s sample was pure. Stanozolol that has been ingested and urinated would be a broken-down version of the drug.

And then there is the following assertion from Astaphan. “Listen, in November 1987, Charlie Francis gave Ben and Angella (Issajenko, another in the group) 16 milligrams of steroid in tablet form — four tablets over two days. They got such bad muscle cramps as a result that they had to take valium. And now, because of the high level Ben tested positive for in Seoul, the suggestion is that he took more than four tablets within 48 hours of the race? It just doesn’t make sense, even a child can see it.”

How, therefore, did Johnson test positive? Theory one: In the last 48 hours before the race, Johnson panicked and tucked into a home supply of drugs. “I know that Ben was purchasing stuff from other people,” Morris Chrobotek, a lawyer who represented him for many years, said. “I know that because he told me.”

Theory two: Astaphan, Francis et al are still lying, even today. They did give him stanozolol, they simply got their sums wrong. This theory holds little water, however. Astaphan was a drugs expert; it would have taken a massive miscalculation for him to have got it so wrong.

Theory three: Sabotage. Someone spiked either the beer that Johnson was drinking after the race or the sample itself. This theory relates particularly to “The Mystery Man”, a character who was hanging around in the post-race doping control area.

Theory four: Conspiracy. Both Francis and Astaphan say independently that within minutes of the race, they were told a rumour that Johnson had tested positive. The rumour was clearly ludicrous because it took Johnson more than an hour to produce his urine sample and more than 24 hours for the testing to be completed.

However, it tallies with their firm belief that certain powers in the sport had pre-arranged Johnson’s fate. As Astaphan says: “Don’t assume either of two things. First, that it was actually his sample that tested positive. And second, that if it was his sample, that it genuinely did test positive.”

That Johnson cheated as a sprinter is beyond doubt. We have his own word on that. But how and why he was caught, we may never know.