Since his sprint career came crashing down in the aftermath of that infamous 100m final at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Johnson has led a curiously disjointed life. Without races to look forward to, he spent much of the '90s maintaining a hermitic existence. He shared a house with his mother and surfaced every so often to launch an appeal against the lifetime ban he received for failing another test for banned substances in 1993.

The wealth he had accumulated as 'the fastest man alive' slowly dripped away to the extent that he once rented himself out to a race against two horses. The fast cars and the trappings of fame disappeared but his reputation for infamy stays with him to this day.

It seems as if every time a high-profile athlete is caught using drugs, coverage is framed by recalling the day Johnson, pumped up on the steroid Stanozolol, left arch-rival Carl Lewis in his wake and stopped the clock at 9.79. Today, living in Toronto, Johnson looks back at that time with a certain bitterness. "It was a joke back then. The entire thing was a charade and a joke, and I'm glad I'm out of it. I'm glad I can enjoy my life. You've got to understand this. I trained for 24 years to be the best I can be but it's only now that I'm getting to really enjoy what I have." Perhaps he's also feeling better these days because he's working on a book in which he claims he'll give his side of the story . . . the definitive version, he says . . . of what really happened in the world of athletics in the '80s.

Johnson moved with his family from the town of Falmouth in Jamaica to Canada in 1976. A shy kid, he found the transition difficult. "It was only when I left Jamaica and came to Canada that I started to take up track and field seriously. I was young, 14 years old, and I weighed only about 90 pounds so I was very small. It took me a long time to develop. I was often very sick as a child so I didn't have a lot of things going for me.

"It took me a while to adjust even to the language barrier because I pronounced certain words the wrong way . . . like how we said them in Jamaica . . . and the way I pronounced something was the way I wrote it. So it took me a long time to change that."

But Johnson soon found acceptance in the athletics community and he also found a mentor in the man who would shape the rest of his career, his coach Charlie Francis. At the time Francis, himself a former Olympic sprinter, was on his way to becoming Canada's national sprint coach and it was he who introduced Johnson to the use of anabolic steroids. Years later, the Dubin Inquiry which was set up to investigate the use of drugs in Canadian sport, would describe how Francis decided that his athletes would have to use performance-enhancing drugs if they were to have any hope of competing internationally. Judge Charles Dubin said that Francis "believed that the majority of world records broken in sprint events were achieved by athletes who were on steroids and that the dramatic improvement in their performance could only be explained in that way." Francis concluded that the use of steroids was widespread and in some circles he had the nickname "Charlie the chemist".

And so Johnson found himself a player in the "charade" that was international track and field.

These days, however, he prefers to downplay the influence of his former coach. "Well, a sprinter is born, not made, and all Charlie tried to do was just guide me in the right direction. He helped to develop my skills and my potential but the product was always there."

An unfortunate choice of words, perhaps, but it was "the product" that transformed Johnson from a decent athlete at national level in 1981, when he began taking steroids, to one who won a silver medal in the 100m at the 1982 Commonwealth Games and another silver in the 4x100m relay. Suddenly, Johnson was part of the world's elite and bronze medals in the same events at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles saw his stature rise further still.

In 1985 he beat Lewis for the first time, setting in train the rivalry that dominated his career on the track. By this stage he was a phenomenon, beating Linford Christie to Commonwealth gold in 1986 and then, in the 100m final at the 1987 World Athletics Championship in Rome he shaved 0.1 seconds off Calvin Smith's world best time of 9.93 seconds. The record has since been quashed but it remains the single biggest lowering of the mark since electronic timing was introduced in the late 1960s.

People were beginning to wonder aloud about his times, with Lewis, unsurprisingly, dropping the biggest hints. The American himself tested positive for banned substances before the Seoul Olympics but that little nugget of information didn't become public knowledge for another 15 years.

Back then he was still at his self-important best and Johnson was the reason his cabinet was filling up with silver.

"There are a lot of people coming out of nowhere, " Lewis said after Rome. "I don't think they are doing it without drugs." Johnson countered that the American was suffering from a severe case of sour grapes. "When Carl Lewis was winning everything, I never said a word against him, " he said in '87. "And when the next guy comes along and beats me, I won't complain about that either."

Nowadays, Johnson is a little more candid about his feelings towards the American. "Most of us got along very well. Linford Christie, he's a funny guy, you know. We had a lot of jokes, going on trips, on the circuit. We'd go to each other's room, hang out, play cards, eat together. You know, everything was cool. I liked Dennis Mitchell, Calvin Smith, all those guys."

And Lewis? "No, we don't like each other. . . and he's a bastard." If his feelings remain this strong after so many years, one can only imagine the rollercoaster of emotions that came with beating Lewis to win Olympic gold in 1988, only to have the medal taken from him and presented to the American days later.

"It was harsh and I was singled out [for a positive drugs test], there's no doubt about that. But, nevertheless, life isn't always fair so I decided to take it in my stride and accept that I made a mistake and that I was going to move on." It may seem strange for Johnson to say he now accepts his wrongdoing while also complaining that he was unfairly targeted. But such are the twisted morals that come from working in an environment where, as far as you're concerned, everyone is just as guilty as you are. As for the Olympic gold medal, Johnson is philosophical about its fate.

"Anything I lost, I don't deserve, " he says.

"Put it another way, I held that medal for 24 hours so I don't miss it because I never really had it.

If I had the medal for a year, maybe it would be different. But it was taken away from me so I don't really care."

And so began his downfall. At first Johnson proclaimed his innocence, just like all the rest, but the pressures of the Dubin Inquiry saw him admit to racing under the influence. Suddenly he was no longer one of the guys in the locker room, joking with Christie or straining to hold off another storming Lewis finish. He was a social pariah.

He made a brief comeback for the 1992 Olympics and made it to the 100m semi-finals, but no further.

Then in 1993 he failed another drugs test, his reputation tainted even further. It prompted then-Canadian sports minister Pierre Cadieux to suggest that Johnson should go back to Jamaica, a comment that particularly rankled with the sprinter.

"He's a politician and all they know how to do is push a pencil. They don't know about training and the dedication and sacrifice and hard work we went through for 20 years. All they do is just sit down and watch you run 9.79, and then if anything goes bad they're the first people to come out and say things because everybody wants to be famous. All that's bullshit."

The Canadian people themselves, he says, have been more forgiving. "The public, I feel, has supported me over the last 20 years. It's just a handful of people here in the government or in the track and field world who don't like me. But I don't give a heck. I don't take on board other people's problems. They have their own problems and they're not mine."

Throughout the '90s, as the 100m world record slowly edged ever closer to his quashed mark of 9.79, Johnson was forced to find a new role and he set himself up as a personal trainer for hire with a couple of notorious clients on his books. Guys he remembers fondly.

"I worked with Diego Maradona and Al-Saadi [Gadaffi] from Libya, the leader's son, and we had a good relationship. He did very well in his soccer career. And Maradona was very nice too. If he trusts you and believes in you, he'll give you the world. You don't have to ask him for anything, he'll give it to you.

But if you do one thing bad, he'll write you off straight away."

Mostly, the years have passed by with Johnson living in a state of limbo, enduring the scorn of athletes who wanted to distance themselves from the world of performance-enhancing drugs and suffering the opprobrium of the track-and-field-following public. But in more recent times, he seems to have again found financial security and some peace of mind. He's also poking fun at himself by appearing in a series of advertisements on Canadian television for an energy drink called, wait for it. . . Cheetah. His catchphrase? "I Cheetah all the time."

"Most people think it's funny, but some people take it a different way, " he says. He's even beginning to cut out a career for himself as a trainer for some up-and-coming Canadian athletes. "I'm trying to help black kids to get off the streets here in Toronto and make sure their school work is good so that they can get a scholarship, go to the States and get a degree and a free education."

His first protege, a sprinter called Gavin Smellie, has already secured a place at Western Kentucky University. While the move has understandably created some unrest in athletics circles, the chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency, Dick Pound, is among those to have recently come out in support of Johnson saying, "If someone does the time, you hope there's been some change in behaviour and approach. If he's really reformed, he'd say, 'I did something that's really bad, and I did it twice. I don't want you to end up like me.'" Mind you, Pound has some previous with regard to Johnson's career. As a lawyer he defended the Canadian against the drug allegations post-Seoul '88. It turns out that the world of track and field is a pretty small one.

These days, Johnson's business interests are beginning to grow. He has sold the rights to a movie about his life to Canadian television and he has put his name to a sports clothing line available on the internet, but with plans for world domination. "If you are going to build a clothing line the same as Nike or Adidas you might as well not do anything.

People want something different. Maybe one day, who knows, I might open a store in Dublin."

He has also regained the trait that seems to be the birthright of every top sprinter: self-belief. "If I was running today, I could run 9.5. The tracks they run on now are much better and the surface makes a big difference. Technology has changed so if you break it down, me running 9.79 slowing down, 20 years later you're talking 9.5."

But all this is said without a hint of reference to how his 9.79 was achieved in the first place. You're left with the feeling that he regrets getting caught, but perhaps not the actions that made him the fastest man alive. When asked if he would change anything about his career he says only that he would run for Jamaica because Canadian authorities didn't protect him when things went pear-shaped. "I still have the medal from [the Los Angeles Olympics] '84, " he says. "I show it to my granddaughter Mikala and I make some videos so that maybe one day she will see it. Maybe she will do athletics too. But only at an innocent level."

Perhaps when Johnson mentions his family he is actually most revealing about himself. If he had stayed at his own innocent level, life would have been so much different. Sure, he would never have been the fastest man alive. But he would never have been disgraced either. His life would be a less remarkable one, but all the happier for it.

LANE-BY-LANE GUIDE TO TH O THE SEOUL 100m FINAL

1 DENNIS MITCHELL (US) Time 10.04 Position 4th Banned for two years for excessive levels of testosterone in 1998. His excuse was that he had 'five bottles of beer and sex with his wife at least four times' the night before giving the urine sample.

USA Track & Field cleared him but the IAAF did not.

2 DESAI WILLIAMS (CAN) Time 10.11 Position 6th Ran a personal best in Seoul. He was implicated in the Canadian government's 1989 Dubin Inquiry into the use of performance-enhancing drugs by their athletes and admitted to using steroids.

3 BEN JOHNSON (CAN) Time 9.79 Position Disqualified Stripped of his gold medal, Johnson returned to athletics two years later but failed a second test in 1993 and was banned for life.

4 CALVIN SMITH (US) Time 9.99 Position Bronze The only man in the initial top five still untarnished by drug allegations. The former world record holder now teaches English literature in Florida.

5 LINFORD CHRISTIE (GB) Time 9.97 Position Silver Failed a drugs test for the stimulant pseudoephedrine after the final, but was cleared on appeal. Received a twoyear ban in 1999 after testing positive for nandrolone.

6 CARL LEWIS (US) Time 9.92 Position Gold Lewis failed three tests at the 1988 Olympic trials but the results were swept under the carpet. The American Olympic body accepted his appeal that he had innocently taken a herbal supplement.

7 RAY STEWART (JAM) Time 12.26 Position Last Stewart trailed in last with a leg injury. Never tested positive but name tarnished as coach of Jerome Young, US 200m runner who failed a drug test in 2000.

8 ROBSON DE SILVA (BRA) Time 10.11 Position 5th His reputation untarnished, De Silva works as an athletics commentator in Rio de Janeiro.

RECORD BREAKERS
World's fastest men (since the introduction of electronic timing)
Time Athlete Venue Date
9.95 Jim Hines (US) Mexico City 14 October, 1968
9.93 Calvin Smith (US) Colorado 3 July, 1983 Carl Lewis (US) Rome 30 August, 1987 Carl Lewis Zurich 17 August, 1988
9.83* Ben Johnson (Can) Rome 30 August, 1987
9.79* Ben Johnson Seoul 24 Sep, 1988
9.92 Carl Lewis Seoul 24 Sep, 1988
9.90 Leroy Burrell (US) New York 14 June, 1991
9.86 Carl Lewis Tokyo 25 August, 1991
9.85 Leroy Burrell Lausanne 6 July, 1994
9.84 Donovan Bailey (Can) Atlanta 27 July, 1996
9.79 Maurice Greene (US) Athens 16 June, 1999
9.78* Tim Montgomery (US) Paris 14 Sep, 2002
9.77 Asafa Powell (Jam) Athens 14 June, 2005 Justin Gatlin (US)

** Qatar 12 May, 2006 Asafa Powell Gateshead 11 June, 2006 Asafa Powell (right ) Zurich 18 August, 2006
* Record rescinded due to banned drug use
** Record currently under review as Gatlin is serving an eight-year ban for testing positive for a banned substance