Dr. Jamie Astaphan, 60, Dies; Gave Olympian Sprinter Ben Johnson Steroids

[steroidbot]

Jamie Astaphan, the physician who supplied the Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson with banned drugs before he won a gold medal in the 1988 Seoul Olympics, died Friday on his native Caribbean island of St. Kitts. He was 60.

The cause was a heart attack, Meredith Charles, the St. Kitts police commissioner, told The Associated Press.

In the Seoul Olympics, Johnson won the 100-meter dash in the world-record time of 9.79 seconds. Three days later, a test disclosed the presence of stanozolol, a performance-enhancing anabolic steroid, in Johnson’s urine. He was stripped of the gold medal and the world record.

At first, Dr. Astaphan denied a drug involvement with Johnson, who he said was “like the son I would want.” But in 1989, when a Canadian government commission looked into the use of drugs by athletes, Dr. Astaphan testified that he had injected Johnson 50 to 60 times with steroids in the five years leading to the Olympics.

During the inquiry, Dr. Astaphan suggested, however, that someone had substituted other drugs for Johnson and that he had never, in fact, given Johnson stanozolol. Dr. Astaphan did not say whom he suspected had made the switch, but to Charles Dubin, the presiding judge, the implication was that he was referring to Charlie Francis, Johnson’s coach.

Dr. Astaphan said at the inquiry:

“The axiom among track and field and other athletes was, ‘If you don’t take it, you won’t make it,’ so if I didn’t monitor them and if I didn’t give it to them, they were going to get it elsewhere. And most of them had got it elsewhere. They came to me for advice and for supervision, and I thought it was my responsibility to do this.”

His peers disagreed. In 1991, the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons found him guilty of professional misconduct, barred him from medical practice for 18 months and fined him $5,000.

Dr. Astaphan remained convinced that athletes needed steroids. At the 1992 Canadian Olympic track and field trials, he told The New York Times: “Here we are, 112 Canadian athletes, all clean, all well dressed, and they’ll all do boo. They won’t even come in last.”

In 1995, Dr. Astaphan pleaded guilty in a Florida court to conspiracy to trade smuggled steroids for cocaine. After serving a two-year prison sentence, he returned to St. Kitts.

A list of survivors was not immediately available.

Dr. Astaphan once told The Canadian Press that he wished he had become a sailor.

“If my parents hadn’t pushed us, particularly my mother, I would be home running a charter boat,” he said.

URL: http%3A//www.nytimes.com/2006/08/22/sports/othersports/22astaphan.html

Tue, 22 Aug 2006 02:53:59 GMT