Ben Johnson: My journey to hell with Gaddafi and Maradona

Ben Johnson needs just three words to describe the life he has lived since that infamous day in Seoul when he was exposed as the most notorious Olympic cheat of the 20th century.

Asked what it has been like to live inside his head for these last 25 years, he fixes you with tired, bloodshot eyes, pauses then says, quietly: 'Journey to Hell.'

The journey has taken Johnson, now 51, to Libya, where he worked for the family of the now-dead dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, and saw for himself the brutality and corruption of that murderous regime.

Ben Johnson has gone from disgrace in Seoul (above left) to anti-drug missionary in London last week (above). On the way he mixed with Colonel Gaddafi (top right), his son Al-Saad, and football maverick Diego Maradona (above right).

It has taken him to Japan, where he subjected himself to the ignominy of freak show races against horses and turtles. Anything for a payday, it seems.

It has seen him convinced by a faith healer that he was a reincarnated pharoah and taken him into the company of Diego Maradona, their mutual demons bonding them in a friendship that lasts to this day.

Life for Ben Johnson did not, it is fair to say, work out quite as he might have expected when he won his first championship medal in 1982, finishing second behind Allan Wells in the 100m at the Commonwealth Games in Brisbane.

Great Brit: Alan Wells won gold in Moscow in 1980

Johnson, Jamaican-born but raised in Canada from the age of 15, had talent. But he threw it all away.

The past, understandably, haunts him still.

'What I did wasn't right,' he says when we meet last week in Manchester. 'I've said I'm sorry. I am sorry. It's not like I wished it happened like this.'

Two-and-a-half decades ago, he was the fastest man who had ever lived, clocking 9.79sec to win the Olympic Games 100m final in Seoul, South Korea.

Three days later the world discovered he had tested positive for steroids after the race. No Olympic gold medallist in history had suffered that fate before. The scandal was unprecedented.

'Busted!' screamed the cover of Sports Illustrated magazine. 'Shamed' said one newspaper front page. 'Guilty' and 'Disgrace' said others. 'Why, Ben?' asked a fifth.

Drug cheats have come and gone since. Many medals have been stripped. But Johnson still remains a uniquely iconic pariah. The first. The worst.

Wannabe: Libyan national team captain al-Saadi Gadhafi, son of Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi, controls a ball during a training session in 2003

A decade after his infamous Olympic final, Johnson had attempted various comebacks but never got close to his former heights.

So he took jobs where he could, including working as a coach for Colonel Gaddafi's third son, Al-Saadi, who aspired to play professional football.

The job gave Johnson an insight into the activities of Gaddafi's thugs and henchmen.

He remembers standing once in an airport arrivals lounge as Gaddafi bodyguards tried to sneak two holdalls of machine guns into Malta. The holdalls had been taken on to the Libyan Airlines flight by Al-Saadi's security men.

Maltese customs officials confiscated one of the holdalls but Johnson recalls: 'While they were occupied doing that, I could see the other bag being picked up off the carousel and taken out. Next day at training there's guards all around the stadium with guns. Should never have been there.'

On another occasion in his three-year association with Al-Saadi, Johnson was in Rome en route to Tripoli, tickets already booked, when he got a call saying Al-Saadi wanted him sooner than expected.

He was told to go to the airport, and went with his manager, Di-anne Hudson. They were ushered aboard a Libyan Airlines 747. They were the only passengers on a plane built to carry more than 500. Gaddafi had commandeered it for them.

The longest stint without leaving Libya was four months.

'It got real boring,' says Johnson. 'Sometimes we'd only train two times a week. The rest of the time I was in my hotel room. Everything in Tripoli shut mid-afternoon for the day. There was nothing to do.'

He would watch movies, or call home, although a telephone bill one month of $60,000, picked up by Al-Saadi, put paid to that.

Johnson laughs as he describes the two dishes on the hotel menu: Camel that 'tasted like beef', and flattened chicken that 'looked like frog'.

Libya's dark divided side, that culminated in the civil war in which Colonel Gaddafi was killed in October 2011, was apparent when Johnson was there.

Infamy: Carl Lewis (centre) and Linford Christie (left) try to catch Ben Johnson in the 100m final in Seoul in 1988

On one occasion, driving in an Al-Saadi convoy, a disgruntled member of the public thumped the roof of Al-Saadi's car. He was taken into custody and badly beaten up.

'When we got to our destination, I feared they would actually beat him to death and we had to beg to get the guy's life spared,' says Johnson.

So why did he work for a despot, having seen first-hand the way the regime operated?

He starts to explain his theory that the Gaddafis hired him as a PR 'two fingers' to America.

He falters but the message is clear. The West saw Libya as a pariah state and him as a pariah athlete. Libya felt it was a coup to have him working with them. He needed work.

On the blocks: Johnsonprior to the start of the men's 100m final in Seoul

Johnson stayed in touch with Al-Saadi, last hearing that his former employer was hiding in exile in Niger.

The Libya job arose thanks to a recommendation to Al-Saadi from Diego Maradona.

The former Argentina No 10 had hired Johnson in 1997 at the tail end of his playing career.

Johnson insists Maradona is a charming, loyal and passionate man with whom he remains on good terms.

'Just don't ever cross him,' adds Johnson. 'He knows some serious people.'

Passionate: Diego Maradona knows "some serious people" according to Johnson

Johnson has turned his hand to countless failed business ventures.

'He's trusted people too easily,' confides Hudson.

A few years ago Johnson put together an autobiography with the help of a friend. His co-author died but Johnson then met a faith healer, Bryan Farnum, who co-opted the project, having convinced a depressed Johnson that he was a reincarnated pharoah and that Carl Lewis was a reincarnated enemy from thousands of years ago.

It is safe to say that Seoul to Soul is not exactly a must read, peppered as it is with mumbo jumbo not of Johnson's making.

Johnson has fared better in other markets, notably Japan, where he is something of a cult figure.

'Like a cartoon character,' says Hudson.

He has been invited there often in his post-competitive years, but mainly to appear in stunts such as racing against turtles or getting fitted with a weights belt and running along the bottom of a pool in a contest against a Japanese swimmer.

'I like the Japanese,' Johnson says. 'Simple people.'

Tainted team: Johnson (left) and his coach Charlie Francis in 1988

In another Japanese stunt he was required to play 'tag' on a football field where his aim was to catch a team of local soap opera actors.

Another time he was hypnotised and told he could not run, then sent on to a track where he could not move his legs.

Johnson's 'crime' from 1988 has defined his life in a way it has not defined the lives of his peers.

From that 1988 final alone, dubbed 'the dirtiest race in history', six of the eight competitors, including America's Carl Lewis and Britain's Linford Christie, were subsequently implicated in doping.

An entire generation is now viewed with doubt. And Johnson, for his sins, has always been symbolic of that era.

He recalls his 'bust'.

His coach, Charlie Francis, came to his Seoul hotel room early on the fateful morning. 'His face was like somebody died,' Johnson says.

Francis told him he had failed a drugs test.

Johnson's first words to him were: 'So they finally got me.'

He had been doping since the early Eighties. It was Francis's idea and Johnson went along with it.

'I didn't realise everyone was juiced until Charlie told me. If everyone was doing it…'

If it was bad in the Eighties, how bad does Johnson think the doping problem is now in athletics?

'Worse,' he says.

As soon as he knew he had failed a test, he told his mother, Gloria, to whom he was exceptionally close until her death in 2004. She was devastated.

He told her: 'Nobody died.'

They agreed as a family he would come clean to the world. Various lawyers advised him against it, he says.

It was not until a Canadian government inquiry in 1989 that he confessed publicly.

Johnson is in Britain now to front a new global anti-doping initiative, Choose the Right Track, a venture funded by Australian businessman Jaimie Fuller, chairman of the SKINS compression sportswear firm.

A world tour will end in the Olympic Stadium in Seoul where Johnson shot to infamy, on September 24, which is 25 years to the day.

He will unroll a petition calling for greater autonomy and funding for the World Anti-Doping Agency, for a global athletes' council that will encourage whistleblowing and provide support, and for 'truth and reconciliation' processes in certain sports blighted by drugs.

Johnson is not being paid for his role.

He says he got involved because his eight-yearold grand-daughter, Micaila, is starting to ask about his past, and is showing an interest in track-and-field sports.

'I don't want her entering a world of drugs,' he says.

Friends of Johnson say that, having seen close friends die early in recent years, he is coming to terms with his own mortality, and legacy.

He knows he has been reviled. He is not sure he can make a difference.

'But I want to try,' he says. 'It's never too late to change things.'

For more information about the Choose The Right Track campaign, go to puresport. skins.net