Post by admin on Mar 24, 2008 14:46:48 GMT -5
Rocket Scientist
An interview with Charlie Francis
by Chris Shugart
On September 24th 1988, the world held its breath for 9.79 seconds. It was the Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea and Ben Johnson had just become the fastest human being on earth.
He reacted to the gun in 0.132 seconds and had taken three blazing steps by 0.8 seconds. Moving at five strides per second, Johnson reached a top speed of 30 MPH. At 94 meters, knowing he had won the gold and already ahead of his arch rival Carl Lewis by six feet, Ben raised his hand in the air in victory. Despite the fact that this caused him to lose form and decelerate drastically, he still shocked the world with the fastest time ever recorded. Ben's coach, since the age of 15, was Charlie Francis.
Later, the 26-year-old sprinter told reporters that he had eased off at the end of the race, saying that he could have run a 9.75, but he was "saving that for next year." You know the rest of the story. Ben tested positive for steroids. His medal and his record were stripped, he and Charlie Francis were painted the biggest cheats in Olympic history, and there would be no next year.
Charlie Francis has been called the greatest living coach in the world and a brain surgeon among sprint coaches. But he's also been dubbed a scoundrel and a "drug pusher to children" by newspapers who are blissfully unaware of what goes on behind the scenes in the world of elite sports. You see, today's top athletes have a choice: Use or lose.
Given that the Olympics are going on right now, it seemed timely to sit down and talk to Charlie Francis about this topic and many more.
T: You were ranked the number five sprinter in the world in 1971 and competed in the '72 Olympics. Does being an athlete yourself make you a better coach?
CF: I think it helps. I was a slow learner as an athlete; I didn't have perfect technique right out of the box. I had to learn it. Knowing how I had to learn it myself helped me to teach. Coaches, to some degree, have to be frustrated jocks.
T: Do you miss competing yourself?
CF: Once I started coaching, it really knocked the competing aspects of my career right out of the picture. I've run into people who were athletes in my era and they still talk about the good old days. I've never really thought about it. I've moved on to something better.
T: Can good coaching be taught to any extent?
CF: Absolutely. You wouldn't let a plumber loose in your house without him having trained under supervision. Yet we have coaches who sent away for a mail order course or get classified as a level four or whatever just because they passed an exam. There's a program in Canada that says, "Doesn't your child deserve a certified coach?" Then you see the work that these idiots do! I think the word is certifiable, not "certified." They take a good concept and turn it into crap.
T: You were very critical of organized athletics in Canada in your book Speed Trap, calling it a bureaucracy at its worst. Anything changed?
CF: Yes, it's worse now.
T: We like to joke at T-mag that the scientists administering the drugs to the Olympic athletes need gold medals of their own. Are there any clean athletes left at the Olympic level in sprinting?
CF: When I testified at the Dubin Inquiry all those years ago, the information I had was that the number of athletes using performance enhancing drugs, at the Olympic level, was about 80%. The IAAF secretary, John Holt, said that my charges were "wildly exaggerated" and said his research showed it was only 30 to 40%, which he obviously considered to be acceptable. Whether it's 30, 40, 50, or 100% is immaterial. The dividing line is not left and right, with the drug free on one side and the dirty cheats on the other. It's divided horizontally with those above the line on the drugs and those below, perhaps being clean.
T: So would it be fair to say that only the losers are clean?
CF: If anyone is clean, it's going to be the losers. The irony becomes that in order for an athlete to be an anti-doping advocate he must be, as a general rule, on drugs! How else would he rise to such a level of prominence so that he would have a platform from which to speak?
T: Supposedly, they're testing for EPO this year on the Olympics. What do you think of that?
CF: Well, they've made a huge story about this implying that it will clean up the Olympic Games. First of all, they've completely glossed over the fact that they have no test for growth hormone, insulin, IGF-1, L-dopa, nerve stimulating hormone, nootropics, and on down the list. But they get a test for EPO and lo and behold, this will cure everything.
What they failed to mention is there are two different tests and you must fail them both. One has a retrospectivity of, at most, four days. The peak reached by EPO after injection is five days. So the only people who will be suffering from this are those that have multiple events that require the blood boosting. So in order to be optimal they would need to top it up somewhere through the meet and they can be grabbed at any time.
T: So they could potentially be dropping off later in the competition?
CF: Well, there's another drug which has now supplanted EPO called Hemopure, which is pure hemoglobin and can be supplemented. There's no test for that. So athletes have already found a way around the EPO test before they've even introduced it, at least at the highest level.
T: So the athletes are going to stay ahead of the game regardless, right?
CF: Well, the top people will. What officials want is to clean it up at the bottom and leave it dirty at the top.
T: You wrote about that in your book. You said they'll bust the nobodies so that it will look like proper testing is taking place, but the star athletes who attract the money are often protected.
CF: Exactly. And they'll know who the stars will be so they'll know where to concentrate the money and the advertising. The same people will win over and over again because the normal process, the distribution of results, will not be there.
T: Would the average person out there watching the Olympics on TV be really shocked if they knew what all went on behind the scenes?
CF: Yes, but only here in North America. In Europe, of course, they all know because they grew up in an athletic environment and participated in it in school. The irony is that once you really know the total scope of the doping, then rather than thinking that all is not as it appears, you realize that everything is at it appears. First is first, second is second etc?
T: That makes sense given that everyone is using something. Now, at the end of Speed Trap, you provided a number of theories as to why Ben tested positive for stanozolol in Seoul. Have you come to any conclusions since then?
CF: We know more now than we did at the time the book was written. Pure stanozolol was found in Ben's urine. This is not possible. Stanozolol is the control agent used in all labs. They set up all the equipment and calibrate it using stanozolol, so they have it there. Now, in order to have pure stanozolol in the urine sample, it can't have been conjugated by the body, and the body breaks it down within 45 minutes of administration. Yet pure stanozolol was found in Ben's urine.
Note: This may be confusing to some readers not familiar with this case. Ben Johnson, like every other top athlete in his sport, did use steroids as part of his training. However, he had not taken that particular drug for some time and was well beyond the accepted clearance time.
T: So in short, you think it was sabotage.
CF: Absolutely. Sabotage occurring at the lab level. In the time frame necessary, the drug will break down in the body or in the sample bottle, and the bottle is sealed. However, if the machine is tampered with, then anything going into it will be contaminated by what's already present in the machine controlled at the lab.
Furthermore, when the sample was re-tested three months later, pure stanozolol was found again. If it had been tampered with at the lab level, then in order to generate the same results the same method would have to be used because the sample itself is sealed. When it's opened, people are watching, so whatever is happening must have already been done inside the machine.
T: So what were the politics behind the sabotage? Who did this to Ben in your opinion?
CF: I can't talk about that. It's gets into too much potential libel. Suffice it to say, that enough things came out after the Games that it was clear that not only were they after Ben in Seoul, but that an attempt was orchestrated to get him in Rome. In fact, a dealer was phoned by a meet organizer to purchase 300 stanozolol tablets in my name for Ben Johnson. I've never met this guy in my life and I wouldn't know him if I tripped over him! Ben doesn't know him either. Clearly, a trail was being established to this particular drug for use later.
T: The director of America's anti-doping program, Dr. Wade Exum, has quit and filed suit against the USOC because he says the US Olympic Committee encourages athletes to take performance enhancing drugs. Is this a "Duh!" situation?
CF: Obviously. Nobody needs to enhance or encourage drug use. You just set the standards and see who comes to the table.
T: You've pointed out that the standards are set so high that clean athletes don't stand a chance. Yet the standard setters then take a moralistic stance against performance enhancing drug use.
CF: The testimony at the Dubin Inquiry is clear: no one knew of any example of a shot putter who ever threw 20 meters clean. The standard for getting on the Canadian Olympic team in 1988 was 20.50! This was commented on in the Dubin Report as proof of encouraging drug use. The response by the Canadian Olympic Association was to raise the standards for the 1992 games to 20.85! Then they said they were glad they ignored the Dubin Report because, and I quote, "Excellence is still the goal of the Canadian Olympic Association."
T: So how do we fix the doping problem in the Olympics? You've written something before about allowing drug use, but not to the point where the athlete begins to compromise his health.
CF: The philosophy is simple. If athletes are doped to the point where their own hormonal production is significantly disrupted, then they should be reined in. Offenses should be punished with suspensions, three months for the first offense and on up from there. The emphasis, however, would be on protecting the athletes, not punishing them. I don't see any other possibility because you have a situation where you have a choice to either break the rules or lose.
The drug testers have a vested interest in this whole sport. They want to pick out the sacrificial lambs and screw them, while letting everyone else walk free even though they know they're all dirty. They do this precisely to keep their jobs. If they cleaned it all up they'd be out of work. And they're making a lot of money.
This guy Wade Exum sure has a big mouth now, but of course he was glad to get all the money from his job before. Then when they don't want to promote him and give him more, he starts talking. They're all happy to take the dough, but when they don't get the promotion they think they deserve, they want to squeal. They knew all along, and if they knew, who else knew?
Then you have the organizers. They don't want to clean it up. It's the same thing; they want to have a few sacrificial lambs. It enhances the unfairness of the entire procedure because it singles out certain individuals for certain treatment.
An interview with Charlie Francis
by Chris Shugart
On September 24th 1988, the world held its breath for 9.79 seconds. It was the Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea and Ben Johnson had just become the fastest human being on earth.
He reacted to the gun in 0.132 seconds and had taken three blazing steps by 0.8 seconds. Moving at five strides per second, Johnson reached a top speed of 30 MPH. At 94 meters, knowing he had won the gold and already ahead of his arch rival Carl Lewis by six feet, Ben raised his hand in the air in victory. Despite the fact that this caused him to lose form and decelerate drastically, he still shocked the world with the fastest time ever recorded. Ben's coach, since the age of 15, was Charlie Francis.
Later, the 26-year-old sprinter told reporters that he had eased off at the end of the race, saying that he could have run a 9.75, but he was "saving that for next year." You know the rest of the story. Ben tested positive for steroids. His medal and his record were stripped, he and Charlie Francis were painted the biggest cheats in Olympic history, and there would be no next year.
Charlie Francis has been called the greatest living coach in the world and a brain surgeon among sprint coaches. But he's also been dubbed a scoundrel and a "drug pusher to children" by newspapers who are blissfully unaware of what goes on behind the scenes in the world of elite sports. You see, today's top athletes have a choice: Use or lose.
Given that the Olympics are going on right now, it seemed timely to sit down and talk to Charlie Francis about this topic and many more.
T: You were ranked the number five sprinter in the world in 1971 and competed in the '72 Olympics. Does being an athlete yourself make you a better coach?
CF: I think it helps. I was a slow learner as an athlete; I didn't have perfect technique right out of the box. I had to learn it. Knowing how I had to learn it myself helped me to teach. Coaches, to some degree, have to be frustrated jocks.
T: Do you miss competing yourself?
CF: Once I started coaching, it really knocked the competing aspects of my career right out of the picture. I've run into people who were athletes in my era and they still talk about the good old days. I've never really thought about it. I've moved on to something better.
T: Can good coaching be taught to any extent?
CF: Absolutely. You wouldn't let a plumber loose in your house without him having trained under supervision. Yet we have coaches who sent away for a mail order course or get classified as a level four or whatever just because they passed an exam. There's a program in Canada that says, "Doesn't your child deserve a certified coach?" Then you see the work that these idiots do! I think the word is certifiable, not "certified." They take a good concept and turn it into crap.
T: You were very critical of organized athletics in Canada in your book Speed Trap, calling it a bureaucracy at its worst. Anything changed?
CF: Yes, it's worse now.
T: We like to joke at T-mag that the scientists administering the drugs to the Olympic athletes need gold medals of their own. Are there any clean athletes left at the Olympic level in sprinting?
CF: When I testified at the Dubin Inquiry all those years ago, the information I had was that the number of athletes using performance enhancing drugs, at the Olympic level, was about 80%. The IAAF secretary, John Holt, said that my charges were "wildly exaggerated" and said his research showed it was only 30 to 40%, which he obviously considered to be acceptable. Whether it's 30, 40, 50, or 100% is immaterial. The dividing line is not left and right, with the drug free on one side and the dirty cheats on the other. It's divided horizontally with those above the line on the drugs and those below, perhaps being clean.
T: So would it be fair to say that only the losers are clean?
CF: If anyone is clean, it's going to be the losers. The irony becomes that in order for an athlete to be an anti-doping advocate he must be, as a general rule, on drugs! How else would he rise to such a level of prominence so that he would have a platform from which to speak?
T: Supposedly, they're testing for EPO this year on the Olympics. What do you think of that?
CF: Well, they've made a huge story about this implying that it will clean up the Olympic Games. First of all, they've completely glossed over the fact that they have no test for growth hormone, insulin, IGF-1, L-dopa, nerve stimulating hormone, nootropics, and on down the list. But they get a test for EPO and lo and behold, this will cure everything.
What they failed to mention is there are two different tests and you must fail them both. One has a retrospectivity of, at most, four days. The peak reached by EPO after injection is five days. So the only people who will be suffering from this are those that have multiple events that require the blood boosting. So in order to be optimal they would need to top it up somewhere through the meet and they can be grabbed at any time.
T: So they could potentially be dropping off later in the competition?
CF: Well, there's another drug which has now supplanted EPO called Hemopure, which is pure hemoglobin and can be supplemented. There's no test for that. So athletes have already found a way around the EPO test before they've even introduced it, at least at the highest level.
T: So the athletes are going to stay ahead of the game regardless, right?
CF: Well, the top people will. What officials want is to clean it up at the bottom and leave it dirty at the top.
T: You wrote about that in your book. You said they'll bust the nobodies so that it will look like proper testing is taking place, but the star athletes who attract the money are often protected.
CF: Exactly. And they'll know who the stars will be so they'll know where to concentrate the money and the advertising. The same people will win over and over again because the normal process, the distribution of results, will not be there.
T: Would the average person out there watching the Olympics on TV be really shocked if they knew what all went on behind the scenes?
CF: Yes, but only here in North America. In Europe, of course, they all know because they grew up in an athletic environment and participated in it in school. The irony is that once you really know the total scope of the doping, then rather than thinking that all is not as it appears, you realize that everything is at it appears. First is first, second is second etc?
T: That makes sense given that everyone is using something. Now, at the end of Speed Trap, you provided a number of theories as to why Ben tested positive for stanozolol in Seoul. Have you come to any conclusions since then?
CF: We know more now than we did at the time the book was written. Pure stanozolol was found in Ben's urine. This is not possible. Stanozolol is the control agent used in all labs. They set up all the equipment and calibrate it using stanozolol, so they have it there. Now, in order to have pure stanozolol in the urine sample, it can't have been conjugated by the body, and the body breaks it down within 45 minutes of administration. Yet pure stanozolol was found in Ben's urine.
Note: This may be confusing to some readers not familiar with this case. Ben Johnson, like every other top athlete in his sport, did use steroids as part of his training. However, he had not taken that particular drug for some time and was well beyond the accepted clearance time.
T: So in short, you think it was sabotage.
CF: Absolutely. Sabotage occurring at the lab level. In the time frame necessary, the drug will break down in the body or in the sample bottle, and the bottle is sealed. However, if the machine is tampered with, then anything going into it will be contaminated by what's already present in the machine controlled at the lab.
Furthermore, when the sample was re-tested three months later, pure stanozolol was found again. If it had been tampered with at the lab level, then in order to generate the same results the same method would have to be used because the sample itself is sealed. When it's opened, people are watching, so whatever is happening must have already been done inside the machine.
T: So what were the politics behind the sabotage? Who did this to Ben in your opinion?
CF: I can't talk about that. It's gets into too much potential libel. Suffice it to say, that enough things came out after the Games that it was clear that not only were they after Ben in Seoul, but that an attempt was orchestrated to get him in Rome. In fact, a dealer was phoned by a meet organizer to purchase 300 stanozolol tablets in my name for Ben Johnson. I've never met this guy in my life and I wouldn't know him if I tripped over him! Ben doesn't know him either. Clearly, a trail was being established to this particular drug for use later.
T: The director of America's anti-doping program, Dr. Wade Exum, has quit and filed suit against the USOC because he says the US Olympic Committee encourages athletes to take performance enhancing drugs. Is this a "Duh!" situation?
CF: Obviously. Nobody needs to enhance or encourage drug use. You just set the standards and see who comes to the table.
T: You've pointed out that the standards are set so high that clean athletes don't stand a chance. Yet the standard setters then take a moralistic stance against performance enhancing drug use.
CF: The testimony at the Dubin Inquiry is clear: no one knew of any example of a shot putter who ever threw 20 meters clean. The standard for getting on the Canadian Olympic team in 1988 was 20.50! This was commented on in the Dubin Report as proof of encouraging drug use. The response by the Canadian Olympic Association was to raise the standards for the 1992 games to 20.85! Then they said they were glad they ignored the Dubin Report because, and I quote, "Excellence is still the goal of the Canadian Olympic Association."
T: So how do we fix the doping problem in the Olympics? You've written something before about allowing drug use, but not to the point where the athlete begins to compromise his health.
CF: The philosophy is simple. If athletes are doped to the point where their own hormonal production is significantly disrupted, then they should be reined in. Offenses should be punished with suspensions, three months for the first offense and on up from there. The emphasis, however, would be on protecting the athletes, not punishing them. I don't see any other possibility because you have a situation where you have a choice to either break the rules or lose.
The drug testers have a vested interest in this whole sport. They want to pick out the sacrificial lambs and screw them, while letting everyone else walk free even though they know they're all dirty. They do this precisely to keep their jobs. If they cleaned it all up they'd be out of work. And they're making a lot of money.
This guy Wade Exum sure has a big mouth now, but of course he was glad to get all the money from his job before. Then when they don't want to promote him and give him more, he starts talking. They're all happy to take the dough, but when they don't get the promotion they think they deserve, they want to squeal. They knew all along, and if they knew, who else knew?
Then you have the organizers. They don't want to clean it up. It's the same thing; they want to have a few sacrificial lambs. It enhances the unfairness of the entire procedure because it singles out certain individuals for certain treatment.