Ben Johnson Case Study

In the year 1988, Seoul hosted the Summer Olympic Games where the men’s 100-meter dash stirred up a bit of controversy. This track and field event was filled with elite athletes who all had one goal in mind, to win the gold. One of these elite sprinters was Ben Johnson, a Canadian originally born in Jamaica, who was the key reason so much drama unfolded. On September 27th, Ben Johnson broke the world record for the 100-meter dash and won the gold medal. As celebration ensued, many were not ready for what happened the next morning. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) revoked Johnson of his Olympic gold medal due to failing a drug test taken after the race. Although, this is not the core issue, the problem is that he thought it was ok for

The first is in the view of Ben Johnson who displayed the ethical theory of egoism, and the second can be seen as ethical realism shown by the IOC. Since Johnson believed he was not doing anything wrong and made decisions in his best interest, he is considered to be practicing egoism. His rationale is that all of the other top athletes were using drugs too, so why do any different. To this day, Johnson still resides by his statement where he has no regrets because at the time, he thought he was not doing anything wrong. It is also important to remember that the culture in 1988 is a little different than it is today. Drugs were not as big of a deal as they are currently so this event was one of those rare moments where consequences were given to the guilty party. Because of this, Johnson pleaded that the IOC acted with discrimination, which was bigger back then compared to today’s society. The fact that he changed his story from initially denying his drug use, to being content with his actions, makes what the IOC took away from Johnson acceptable. It is clear that in making his decisions, he was only thinking about himself, keeping an egoist ethical framework in mind by cheating his way to the Olympics, a gold medal, and a world