What do sprinters Ben Johnson, Butch Reynolds, Justin Gatlin, Florence Griffith-Joyner and Marion Jones, football’s Dana Stubblefield and Lyle Alzado, baseball’s Barry Bonds, and boxers Evander Holyfield and James Toney have in common?

After reaching the pinnacle of their sports, they were suspected of or caught using anabolic steroids. Major League Baseball has revealed the names of 82 alleged users, including Detroit’s Gary Sheffield.

Johnson, the ultra-muscular Canadian who finished first in the 1988 Olympic 100-meter dash in a world-record 9.79 seconds, was stripped of his gold medal and record for testing positive for steroids. Ohio State’s Reynolds, the third man in history to run 400 meters under 44 seconds (and the first at sea level), was later suspended after failing a drug test. Gatlin, the 2004 Olympic 100 meters winner and record-holder at 9.77, tested positive, lost his record, and will be banned from the Olympic Games this summer. It’s been surmised that steroids stole decades from the lives of the deceased Alzado and Griffith-Joyner.

During the 1950s, I outran two Olympic 400 champions – George Rhoden of Jamaica (my high school idol) and Charley Jenkins of Villanova – plus a future champion, the late Mike Larrabee of the Southern California Striders. Larrabee was among the world’s best quarter-milers of my era, clocking consistently in the 46- to 47-second range. After retiring from racing to become a championship PSL coach, I read that my old rival was experimenting with a new – and still-legal – “vitamin.” At the advanced age of 29, Mike mysteriously added many pounds of muscle and won the 1964 Olympic 400 in 45.1. Had I discovered that he or any of the fastest stars I faced in the ’50s were using some new performance-enhancing drug, I might have tried it, too.

After remorsefully admitting she used steroids, Marion Jones returned her five Olympic medals and was sentenced to six months in jail. I sympathize with her, because the system deserves much of the blame. The fans’ cravings for world records, knockouts, touchdowns and home runs have become so ravenous that many elite athletes in big, muscle-powered competitions, like sprinting, boxing, football and baseball, resort to steroids to keep pace with hordes of cheating competitors.

In April, 1997, a Sports Illustrated article went so far as to say it’s impossible to make a major sprint final without taking steroids. Worse, many teen athletes all the way down to the middle school level are using them now.

This sad situation has reduced my regard for current feats in those competitions. Rather than watch chemically-driven sprinters and sluggers, I prefer now to watch grainy footage of Jesse Owens, Jim Thorpe, Wilma Rudolph, Jackie Robinson – and Rhoden and Jenkins. I also watch old films of Detroit’s own Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson, Willie Horton, Lem Barney and Mel Farr, and 1932 Olympian Eddie Tolan – Cass Tech’s and U-M’s pre-Owens world’s fastest human. I watch tapes of Barry Sanders, Thomas Hearns, Hilmer Kenty and the magnificent Muhammad Ali. I watch films of my U.S. teammate and world-record hurdler Hayes Jones of Pontiac, and of 200/400-meter legend Henry Carr, Northwestern’s great Gray Ghost.

All of us old speedsters are ghosts now – gray ghosts of golden days when champions were real and clean and played by the rules.

Dr. John Telford was an All-American at WSU and is a member of its Hall of Fame. The Finney High track is named after him. Write him at john.telford@detroitk12.org.