Great episode!!! This was really fun to watch. We see their races, which are actually very hard to find as the Olympics have extreme copyright rules. We have interviews with most of the runners from the Olympics in question where Ben Johnson broke the world record and tested positive days later. We have the runners explain what they felt, what they did, a bit about their families. And we have a big run-up to the race itself with other races and Carl Lewis and Ben Johnson competing. Ben Johnson was an unknown Canadian athlete suddenly getting world famous and very rich because he started doping and perform. The 100 meter race was a gigantic event and doping was rampant. First East Germany, but soon people in the West got the same drugs. At first it was impossible to test for. And athletes didn't use them during races anyhow. They used them to train and grow. And then used other drugs to pee water. So the doping agencies would wonder about why they kept testing water instead of urine.
Some Canadian coaches were irritated about Canada being terrible in the Olympics. So they found some regular Black athletes with good genes for sprinting they could dope and make the best in the world. I'm actually not sure who the coaches were. We don't get many interviews with them. The guys who produced the drugs didn't do interviews in this episode so a ton of names are just mentioned out of nowhere.
This doc is about 30% about Carl Lewis, 20% about Ben Johnson and then the rest is about other runners and background info. We get very little big info as mostly runners are interviewed about opinions and memories. Which is still cool of course. The runners just appear, give a statement, and we move on. It's hard to really understand everything here because there is no slow date progression shown. We just fly from event to event. The narrator is also not featured that much. So it feels like a rush of events just jumping at you.
We don't learn where the drugs come from. Who the main suppliers were. How they got in contact with the athletes. How the coaches were punished for it? What they felt about it? How many athletes do they know about?
But from this doc it was VERY clear way more athletes could be revealed. At the end a guy even said he retested old samples and another guy said there is no point in revealing the past dopers he knows about. It's quite clear there are people alive who could destroy the 80's and 90's results with the info they have. Removing old world records and medals. It feels like a mystery.
The issue is that the doc is empty on info. We don't see how this stuff is tested or taken. We don't even see how Ben Johnson tested positive later on. They just mention a future positive test that got him banned for life. The guy just had to take drugs to be able to compete at a top level. His life seems interesting. But this is largely about one race only so we don't see much outside of that.
Watch this to have some fun. But you likely want something deeper to get to the core of the issue.