Twist of Race

Ben Johnson was a Canadian hero.  He was a man born in Jamaica, but just liked many others was accepted in Canada for being different.  Canada, unlike the United States, is a mosaic.  They are filled with all sorts of different people and lets them all be different, while the United States is a melting pot, where they try to take all their different people and turn them all into the same thing.  Johnson won Olympic Gold in the 1988 Summer Olympics in the 100m sprint, beating American Carl Lewis, considered to be one of the best all time sprinters in the world.  Canadians love beating Americans and a natural rivalry has been created where both countries take things a little more seriously when an event is between one another.  Johnson proved that Canadians can be better than Americans and with that gave Canada a sense of pride and every different person in Canada was proud.  Except there was one problem; Johnson cheated.  He got caught using performance enhancers three days later and was stripped of his gold medal.  This brought the twist of race.  Now Canadians saw him as nothing more than a cheater from Jamaica and hated him.  There even seemed to be more coverage in the newspapers that he cheated more than him winning the medal in the first place.  Because of this, the Dubin Inquiry was formed.  This was a court case that began in January of 1989 and lasted 91 daysand featured 122 witnesses that ranged from athletes and coaches to doctors and government officials.  This was something that Canada took very seriously and as happy as they were to have won, they were even more furious that Johnson cheated.