The drugs took twenty-eight days to clear the body. And with no out-of-competition testing, avoiding a positive test required nothing more than looking at a calendar. ibid.
Zurich 1986: for the first time in nine races Carl Lewis had been beaten by Ben Johnson. ibid.
Rome 1987 World Championships: 9.83 seconds. ibid.
Just four months before the Olympics Johnson pulled a hamstring. ibid.
Four weeks before the Olympics Lewis and Johnson locked horns again in Zurich. ibid.
At the 1988 US Olympic trials Carl Lewis tested positive for three banned stimulants. This was not made public. ibid.
One of Britain’s greatest sportsmen, the sprinter Linford Christie, has been suspended from athletics on suspicion of taking drugs. BBC News
Anti-doping experts ... This data – which has come from records held by the IAAF and have never been released before, according to these two experts the evidence which has been seen by the BBC shows that one third of medals in endurance events at Olympics World Championships between 2001 and 2012 have been won by athletes who recorded suspicious blood results. BBC News report 2nd August 2015
The 100m Olympic final. The big one. The must-see event. Thousands in stadiums, millions on television, wait for the fastest men in the world to begin their race. Faster Higher Stronger – Stories of the Olympic Games I, BBC 2012
Sprinting at speeds up to twenty-eight miles per hour. ibid.
It’s showtime, and lining up for the 100m final are the big beasts of the Olympic track. ibid.
1896: Tom Burke from Boston University ... switched from a standing to a crouching start. ibid.
The secret is to have just the right instinctive response to the gun. ibid.
They also trained for the right finish. ibid.
Abrahams won gold in an Olympic record time of 10.6 seconds. ibid.
1936: Owens showed that the 100m could be raced with elegant economy and flawless technique ... 10.3 seconds. ibid.
Phase 3: maximum velocity ... The raw power generated by a strongly muscled body ... With power came a new body-type. ibid.
The first of the great power runners ran in Tokyo – Bob Hayes. ibid.
Hayes won in Tokyo in a time of 10.06 seconds. ibid.
And when Jim Hines competed at the 1968 games in Mexico City he had the advantage of running on synthetic tracks. ibid.
When Hines crossed the line they recorded an historic moment: 9.95 seconds ... The first man to run under ten seconds. ibid.
Carl Lewis Los Angeles 1984 ... Sprinting could still be a thing of beauty. ibid.
The Jamaican-born Ben Johnson ran for Canada: 9.79 seconds. ibid.
Found guilty of taking illegal steroids, Johnson was stripped of his gold medal. ibid.
Jamaica has a population of just three million. But it has always had a history of athletic excellence. ibid.
First in Barcelona in 1992 running for Great Britain, Linford Christie won gold. ibid.
1996 Donovan Bailey ... Christie false-started and was disqualified ... Donovan Bailey was lying fifth at 30m ... 9.84 seconds. ibid.
Usain Bolt simply electrified the 2008 Olympics ... Bolt started badly ... Decided to ease up ... 9.69 seconds. ibid.
Can Bolt run faster? ibid.
Is there a speed limit? ibid.
The Olympic Games of 1976: 14-year-old Nadia Comaneci steps up to the uneven bars and into history ... She is awarded the first ever ten out of ten in Olympic competition. Faster Higher Stronger – Stories of the Olympic Games II
New twists, turns and somersaults to already daring routines. ibid.
The Melbourne games of 1956 ... Only the second games where women had been allowed to compete for individual medals, but here was a new beginning. ibid.
Larisa Latynina: 9 gold, 5 silver, 4 bronze. ibid.
She [Vera Caslavska] introduced new feeling and emotion to gymnastics; and for the first time Vera brought an alluring even sexy presence to the women’s competition. ibid.
In Mexico City Caslavska completely dominated the women’s competition. ibid.
Vera returned home a hero to the Czech people but an enemy to the state. ibid.
Vera Caslavska: 7 gold, 4 silver. ibid.
For the Japanese each gymnastic move has its own life of beauty ... Kato conquered all six men’s disciplines. ibid.
Sawao Kato: 8 gold, 3 silver, 1 bronze. ibid.
The Japanese invented moves of ever greater difficulty. ibid.
Olga Korbut: 4 Gold, 3 Silver. ibid.
Nadia Comaneci: 5 gold, 3 silver, 1 bronze. ibid.
1992: Li Xiao Shuang attempted the first ever backwards triple somersault. ibid.
The Los Angeles Olympics 1984: three British runners prepare to contest the 1500s, the Blue Ribbon event of any Olympics ... Sebastian Coe sprinted to the finishing line. Faster Higher Stronger – Stories of the Olympic Games III
Paavo Nurmi ... was the first to bring a level of professionalism to running ... Nurmi arrived at the Paris Olympics of 1924 ready to contest the 1,500 metres: 3 mins 53.6 sec. ibid.
Nurmi: 9 gold medals. ibid.
1960 Rome Herb Elliott: world record 3 mins 35.6 sec. ibid.
1964 Tokyo Peter Snell: 800m & 1,500m. ibid.
1972 Munich: Pekka Vasala. ibid.
1984: Coe v Cram. ibid.
1988: Rono v Elliott v Cram. ibid.
Heralded the arrival of Africa which would come to dominate the Olympic 1,500 metres. ibid.
El Guerrouj rose to prominence in the 1990s with a series of outstanding performances ... El Guerrouj retired as the greatest 1,500 champion in the history of the Olympics. ibid.
2008: American Michael Phelps attempts to win his first of eight gold medals. Faster Higher Stronger – Stories of the Olympic Games IV
Alick Wickham ... swam like no-one had swam before ... This stroke was brand new ... the Australian crawl. ibid.
The Duke may have smashed world records but some barriers [racial] could not be broken. Johnny Weissmuller found fame as Tarzan but only after winning five Olympic gold medals. ibid.
The first Olympian to swim a 100 metres under the magic minute: 59.00 seconds. ibid.
1956 Melbourne: Australians started claiming the freestyle for themselves. ibid.
A true swimming phenomenon: 19-year-old Dawn Fraser was something quite new. ibid.
The butterfly ... took a special kind of swimmer to perfect this unnatural stroke. ibid.
Mark Spitz 1972: this time everything went according to plan ... He took a second off [Michael] Wenden’s 1968 world record: 51.22 ... seven gold medals; he broke world records in every single one. ibid.
Aged just 22 Spitz retired. ibid.
1976: Scottish breaststroker David Wilkie: 2.15.11. ibid.
Moorhouse attempted to emulate his hero at the Seoul Olympics: 1.02.04. ibid.
In the women’s events East German won ten out of fifteen ... Rumours circulated they weren’t clean. ibid.
East German women dominated throughout the eighties ... A state-sponsored programme had been supplying athletes with performance-enhancing steroids. ibid.
Talbot [coach] had a trump card ... Ian Thorpe ... He was six foot five with size fourteen feet. ibid.
2008: swimming reached new heights ... Michael Phelps set out to become the first man to win eight golds in one games ... The medley: 4.03.84. A masterclass in modern swimming. ibid.
He set new world records in six events. ibid.
Back in 1980 the world was a turbulent potentially violent place. And ideological war was raging between East and West, between communism and capitalism. Moscow 1980: The Cold War Olympics, BBC 2013
1980 Olympics main event: Coe v Ovett. ibid.