TWENTY years divide two astonishing Olympic 100 metres finals where the world record was not merely broken but shattered.
At the 1988 Seoul Games, muscular Ben Johnson exploded from the blocks to cross the line in 9.79 seconds, four hundredths of a second faster than his own world mark.
This year the lanky Usain Bolt clocked 9.69sec in Beijing, bettering his old record by three hundredths of a second.
Both men, Jamaican-born although Johnson ran for Canada, slowed up dramatically in the final 10 metres with their rivals trailing in their wake.
The first race resulted in the biggest drugs scandal to hit the summer Games when Johnson tested positive for the steroid stanozolol. The sport of track and field, and in particular the 100m, has struggled for credibility since.
Carl Lewis, a nine-time Olympic gold medallist who won one of his titles after Johnson was disqualified, underlined how hard a struggle this has been.
Asked to comment on Bolt's astonishing run, Lewis replied: 'I'm still working with the fact that he dropped from 10-flat to 9.6 in one year. I think there are some issues.
'Countries like Jamaica do not have a random (dope control) programme, so they can go months without being tested. I'm not saying anyone is on anything but everyone needs to be on a level playing field.'
Drug bans
As Lewis then pointed out, six men have broken 9.80sec. Three (Johnson and Americans Tim Montgomery and Justin Gatlin) subsequently served drugs bans.
In 1987, Lewis lost to Johnson at the Rome world championships, a result which would have seemed inconceivable three years earlier when the American ruled supreme at the Los Angeles Olympics.
Lewis was not happy, muttering that there was something strange in the air.
'People forget that I was the first one to speak out about Ben and I got crucified. A year later, I was a prophet,' he said.
In the northern hemisphere summer of 1988, athletics was still a major sport and a race between Lewis and Johnson in Zurich, won convincingly by the former, became front-page news.
A Canadian government inquiry in 1989 revealed the extent of doping in track and field while Johnson's coach Charlie Francis testified that the athlete had been on drugs since 1981.
Over the next decade, the authorities tightened their controls and a series of scandals shook the sport.
Germany's 1991 double world sprint champion Katrin Krabbe fell foul of the testers and Britain's 1992 Olympic 100m gold medallist Linford Christie was later to test positive for nandrolone when in semi-retirement.
Even Lewis has not escaped suspicion. In 2003 it was revealed that he had tested positive for three banned stimulants at the 1988 Olympic trials but was not sanctioned when the US Olympic Committee accepted he had taken the drugs inadvertently in a cold medication.
Exasperated
Bolt and Asafa Powell, the former world 100m record-holder, were tested repeatedly in Beijing and their physiques differ markedly from Johnson, who had the torso of a weightlifter.
Both Jamaicans have become understandably exasperated at the suspicions that attends any world record these days.
As Lewis pointed out, this is the reality of modern-day track and field.
'If the sport doesn't have credibility, you're not going to get the sponsors,' he explained.
'It has to come from the inside out and America has to lead the way.
'We're cleaning things up. But they have to go further. Other people have to speak out.'
