Johnson story year’s biggest

Press, 30 December 1988, Page 34

Johnson story year’s biggest

NZPA-AP New York Ben Johnson, the fastest man in the world, will spend the rest of his life running from a few seconds at the Seoul Summer Olympics.

Johnson’s fall in the Olympic Games drug-use scandal was voted the Associated Press sports story of the year by United States editors and sports writers in balloting announced yesterday. A similar poll of 57 sports editors from AP subscribers outside North America pickeu, as the world’s top sports story of 1988, the use of drugs by athletes, as exemplified by the Johnson scandal. In the United States poll, Johnson’s downfall topped a list of stories which also included the baseball heroics of Orel Hershiser and Kirk Gibson, the trade Gretzky that rocked ice hockey and the real-life melodrama of the boxer, Mike Tyson. . . In the international balloting, sports editors chose as the other top stories the Seoul Summer Olympics, Steffi Graf’s Grand Slam tennis feat, Florence Griffith-Joyner’s track records at Seoul, and the Netherlands’ victory in the European soccer championships.