Olympic Sprinter Johnson: Longer Bans Prevent Doping

(ATR) Olympic champion Michael Johnson has supported the idea of longer bans for drug cheats, saying it’s the "primary deterrent" for potential offenders.

Johnson, a former 400m world record holder, was speaking at the Nolan Partners Sport Industry Breakfast Club on Monday in London.

The suspension for dope cheats will double from two to four years in January under the new World Anti-Doping Agency code. Johnson supported the idea of longer bans but also defended the integrity of the majority of athletes.

"I think that [a longer ban] is the primary deterrent," he said. "But that’s the primary deterrent for those who decide to cheat. Not everybody’s going to decide to cheat. A lot of people had the deterrent before.

"Most people in society do not cheat, right? Sport is just a microcosm of society. The people that play sport are the same people who live in society. Most people in sport are not going to cheat because it’s not part of that. It’s not part of their fabric. They don’t do that, and they weren’t raised to cheat.

"Those people who cheat are going to cheat regardless, and longer bans is a deterrent for those people, but there is a deterrent for people before they are even approached by drugs because it’s just not part of who they are."

Calls for lifetime bans for convicted perpetrators increased last month when research emerged that muscles can retain the advantages of anabolic steroids decades after being taken.

The study, conducted by the University of Oslo on mice, raised serious questions over the legitimacy of performances of athletes such as U.S. sprinter Justin Gatlin, who has ran faster than ever since returning from a drugs ban in 2010.

But Johnson said he needed to "wait and see what more studies show" before committing himself to backing lifetime suspensions.

"It’s early days, but that’s the sort of research that needs to continue to be done because if you want to have a level playing field, then you've got to know as much as you possibly can.

"You’ve got to find out as much as you possibly can about the effects of doping on athletes and whether or not the effects that may help an athlete to have an advantage continue on after that athlete has maybe served a ban and is no longer doping.

"If he’s still receiving the benefit, then it’s not a level playing field. But that’s going to be very difficult to research and find out because now you’ve got to take long-term studies on athletes that have doped for many, many years, and that’s the unfortunate thing about doping."

Johnson was in London primarily to promote Michael Johnson Performance, his pet project aimed at providing training programs and consultation to athletes and teams of all ages and sports.

With his programs aimed at helping athletes reach their full natural potential, Johnson was uncomfortable with the idea of a dope cheat entering one of his camps, admitting, however, that they would have to be accepted.

"It depends on the athlete" he added. "If you take an athlete who has doped, and that athlete has now served their time, if that athlete comes to us and says, ‘This is what I did. This is why I did it. I’m going to try and help right the process by saying this is what you have to look out for and these are the things that are going to help educate other athletes and I now want to do the right thing,' absolutely.

"Those athletes who have doped and said, 'Someone spiked my whatever,' and came up with some excuse that doesn't really hold water and shows no remorse, I wouldn't want to have that athlete in my program, but I can’t stop that athlete from coming into my program.

"Because we’re a commercial organization, we can’t discriminate against one person and say, ‘We’re not going to let you in our program.'"

Johnson was more favorable when talking about the Olympic movement – little surprise given he won four gold medals – and had no urgent recommendations in mind when asked for his contribution to the International Olympic Committee’s Agenda 2020 review.

"I think the Olympic movement does a very good job of growing the Olympics," he said.

"There’s a lot of work being done at grassroots level to get young people involved in sport, the IOC continues to try and move the Games around such as being in South America for the first time coming up in 2016, the inclusion of different sports, modern sports that haven’t ever been part of the Olympics, the reintroduction of golf now for 2016.

"So I think they’re doing a pretty good job."

Reported by Christian Radnedge

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