DIANABOL.US

Ben Johnson might have taken stanozolol (winstrol), the anabolic steroid found in his urine at the Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, within 22 days of the 100-meter final without knowing it, one of his former teammates told a Canadian Government inquiry today.

Ben Johnson might have taken stanozolol, the anabolic steroid found in his urine at the Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, within 22 days of the 100-meter final without knowing it, one of his former teammates told a Canadian Government inquiry today.

Angella Issajenko, Canada’s most prominent female sprinter, said she doubted that the drug Dr. George (Jamie) Astaphan had given Johnson in his final cycle of steroid use before the Olympics was the substance Astaphan had identified as Estragol, also known as furazabol.

She said she believed it was a drug known commercially as Winstrol-V, an injectable steroid that contains stanozolol and is similar to furazabol in appearance. Both are milky liquids.

Her theory came at the end of three weeks of testimony in the track-and-field phase of the inquiry into the use of performance-enhancing drugs by athletes. It took five minutes to emerge, under questioning by Charles L. Dubin, the Associate Chief Justice of Ontario, who is commissioner of the inquiry. Dubin was the last to address her.

Her theory would account for the presence in Johnson’s urine of stanozolol, and would put into perspective some of the testimony offered earlier by Charlie Francis, the 40-year-old former sprinter who coached Johnson and Issajenko.

Francis had told the inquiry that Astaphan, who began supplying steroids to Francis’s athletes in 1984, had preferred Winstrol in tablet form to other steroids because it was milder and cleared the system faster, usually in about 21 days, a week sooner than other drugs. He also testified that Johnson had taken Winstrol tablets for short periods five times, starting in 1982. Stiffness in Muscles

Johnson abbreviated each cycle, Francis said, whenever he began to feel tightness in his muscles. For that reason, he assumed Johnson did not like the drug and, as far as he knew, did not take it again after a short period in the spring of 1987. Stanozolol, Francis told the inquiry, was ”the last thing” Johnson needed in Seoul.

Francis also testified that Johnson finished his final cycle of steroids on Sept. 2. The 100-meter final was Sept. 24.

source: NY Times