Athlete Says He Threatened Expose : Claims He Won Reinstatement With Silence Over Johnson

TORONTO —  Peter Dajia, a shot-putter who was suspended from competition after failing a drug test, said today that he was reinstated by the Canadian Track and Field Assn. last summer after threatening to expose steroid use by Ben Johnson.

Dajia and two other throwers tested positive for banned drugs at the Canadian track and field championships in 1986 and were suspended for 18 months.

Dajia, 25, told a federal drug inquiry that the suspension lasted almost two years and that efforts by his lawyer for reinstatement did not work.

He said he then took matters into his own hands and spoke with Steve Findlay, an athlete’s representative with the track association in Ottawa.

“I asked him why I hadn’t been reinstated yet. I threatened to turn in the world’s fastest human being. I was going to go to the press. I had nothing to lose.”

‘Think of Your Sport’

Dajia, a soft-spoken Toronto native, said Findlay tried to calm him down and asked him not to “make any harsh decisions.”

“You don’t need to do this,” he quoted Findlay as saying. “Think of your sport.”

Dajia said the association began reinstatement proceedings several days later and he was allowed to compete at last year’s national championships, where he finished second.

Before his dramatic testimony, Dajia admitted that he used banned steroids for a number of years beginning in 1983, and he named a teammate as a supplier.

He said he started using the muscle-building drugs on the advice of his coach, Mike Mercer, and subsequently obtained drugs from Canadian shot-putter Bishop Dolegiewicz.

Dajia, a physical education student at the University of Texas, said he also obtained drugs from Johnson’s personal physician, Dr. Jamie Astaphan, and from an unidentified doctor in Fort Worth.

Earlier today, Mark McKoy, Canada’s top hurdler, denied he abandoned the 1988 Olympic Games because he feared a positive drug test after the Johnson drug scandal.

‘Racist Comments’

Defiant in his second day before a federal drug inquiry, McKoy said “racist comments” and back-stabbing by Canadian athletes, coaches and officials caused him to leave Seoul before running the 400-meter relay race.

He said a Canadian coach, whom he did not identify, told the Jamaican team that it could have Johnson “back now. We don’t want him anymore.”

Robert Armstrong, the commission’s senior counsel, asked: “Is it possible you left Seoul because you feared a positive drug test?”

“No,” McKoy replied curtly.

The hurdler also denied that he intentionally finished a disappointing seventh in a race the day Johnson learned he had failed the test.

On Tuesday, McKoy became the 11th track star to admit taking the muscle-building chemicals when he told Justice Charles Dubin that he took them only briefly in 1987.