The Canadian coach, Charlie Francis, whose star sprinter, Ben Johnson, was the first Olympic champion to be stripped of a gold medal after testing positive for anabolic steroids died in Toronto at the age of 61 years.

Francis received worldwide criticism after he made an unapologetic admission that his athletes used performance enhancing drugs.

From NYTimes.com:

In 1989, Francis was barred for life from coaching in Canada when he told an inquiry that Johnson and 10 other athletes had used performance-enhancing drugs as part of training programs he designed.

Francis continued to advise runners from around the world, in books, on the Internet and in person. For a time in 2003, the American sprinters Marion Jones and her companion, Tim Montgomery, worked with him in Toronto. Responding to pressure from sponsors and track officials, Jones and Montgomery left Francis. Both later admitted to using performance-enhancing drugs.

“Charlie’s legacy is multi-layered,” said Dr. Steven Ungerleider, a psychologist and author of “Faust’s Gold: Inside the East German Doping Machine.” “He wasn’t just an isolated coach, with an isolated athlete; he left this legacy that contaminated some of the greatest track stars of the world.”

Richard Pound, a former vice president of the I.O.C., said Francis became increasingly frustrated in the late 1970s and ’80s with what he felt was a lack of response from international track officials to punish athletes using performance enhancing drugs.

Tags: anabolic steroids, Ben Johnson, Charlie Francis, Marion Jones, Performance enhancing drugs

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