RUNNING AWAY FROM THE TRUTH
St. Martin's, 306 pp., $18.95;  CHARLIE Francis, testifying in 1988 in Toronto at a federal inquiry about the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sports, seemed a mad scientist, something on the order of Dr. Frankenstein. Francis, the Canadian national sprint coach, knew the polysyllabic names and complex characteristics of steroids -- furazabol, stanozolol, Dianabol -- as if they were members of his family. And although he spoke of his athletes as if they were family members, too, he made it plain, under oath, that he had given them every steroid combination imaginable, his experiments all carefully calibrated, charted and analyzed.;    His system had worked remarkably. On Sept. 24, 1988, Francis' most famous pupil, Ben Johnson, who immigrated to Toronto from Jamaica as a scrawny 14-year-old, ran 100 meters in 9.79 seconds at the Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. The time was a world record and gave Johnson the gold medal, ahead of the defending champion, U.S. star Carl Lewis.;    But the Francis system, like all systems, was not foolproof. "About 42 hours after my life's greatest moment," Francis writes on the first page of his confessional, "Speed Trap," his "nightmare began.";    Johnson, the world's fastest man, had tested positive for illegal steroid use. Suddenly he was the world's fastest cheat. Millions of dollars worth of endorsements shriveled up. His gold medal was revoked, and his world record was, too.; Because Johnson was caught, the Canadians were embarrassed. Because they were embarrassed, they conducted a federal inquiry. Because they held an inquiry, Francis had to testify. And because of that testimony, we have "Speed Trap," an elaboration of what Francis said at the inquiry and a history of his remarkable path through the world of track and field.;    He argues, essentially, that to be a world-class sprinter, you must use steroids -- he makes this argument even as Johnson attempts a comeback for the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, Spain, without them.;    Steroids do not make a runner run faster, Francis explains, but they enable a runner to train harder. The desire for speed comes with incredible costs, and they are the trap. By encouraging his athletes to use steroids -- and Francis maintains that they all wanted to do so and knew about steroids before the coach brought the subject up -- Francis argues that he is simply helping to create a level playing field.; We learn that the use of performance-enhancing drugs is nothing new in the world of sports -- that cocaine and arsenic and codeine were used by athletes in the 1896 Olympic Games. We learn that Johnson harmed his own world-record times by raising his hand jubilantly as he approached the finish line. We learn that if athletes take steroids on their own, independent of an official (but still illicit, of course) program, it's called "free-lancing." That's one of Francis' theories for why Johnson got caught.;    But, Francis says, there is no logical reason for Johnson to have been caught. After all, he had never been caught before. No one of Johnson's standing had been caught before. Francis offers theories for the positive test result -- free-lancing, sabotage, a screw-up by the team doctor -- but there is no clear answer.; For all its candor, answers and revelations are not forthcoming in "Speed Trap." Francis, without naming names, convinces us that steroid usage is rampant, but he tells us what that means to him only in a technical sense. The book lacks a strong sense of character development. It does not take any moral stand; it lacks passion. How did Francis feel violating the rules? What drove him? What did he really feel toward Johnson?;    After a two-year ban, Johnson is running again without Francis' coaching. The early word is that he is still extremely fast, probably one of the fastest men in the world -- but no longer the fastest. Francis would have us believe that without steroids, Johnson cannot be the fastest. (Johnson disagrees.);    At the end of "Speed Trap," Francis says that steroids cannot be simply banned -- their use is too prevalent, they can be disguised too easily and they work too well. The dangers have been exaggerated, Francis says. People who want running to be a "natural" sport are naive. "We ceased being natural ages ago, the moment we stopped running barefoot on dirt paths," Francis writes. "It is a formidable challenge to distinguish between nature and artifice, a task I would leave to the philosophers.";    But "Speed Trap" left me wishing Francis had at least tried his hand at philosophy. Isn't that everyone's responsibility? To ask why we do the things we do? "But I was a sprint coach, and I had a different job," he concludes. "To help a few gifted people run as fast as they could."; They ran fast, all right. But he never seems to have asked himself: Is it worth it? (box)
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