Donovan Bailey discusses, "Undisputed: A Champion's Story" (SportsLit S7E04)
Here is a listen-along guide to a pod 'sode with the double Olympic gold medallist and one-time Fastest Human on Earth, whose autobiography is being released Oct. 31 — TODAY! — by Random House Canada.
Donovan Bailey smoothly accepted the simile like it was Bruny Surin passing him the baton for the home stretch of the relay. That made my day!
The two-time Olympic sprinting gold medallist’s new memoir, Undisputed: A Champion’s Story, offers several takeaways for readers. Bailey, 55, shares what was unique about his immigrant story, his unlikely entry into elite Athletics, and of course, the double-gold glory at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Try not to get category-4 chill bumps if you go on YouTube and hear the late great Don Wittman proclaim, “If you’re Canadian, you’ve got to love Saturday nights in Georgia!” while Bailey brings it home in the men’s 4x100 relay. Those who know, know.
The Olympic 100 lasts around 10 seconds every four years. So much can affect things during the four-year lead-up to the Games. It seemed akin to — nerd alert! — a space shuttle launch, and Bailey concurred.
“That’s exactly what it is — if you’re going into the Olympic finals, you are the space shuttle, because nothing can wrong. In the 100 metres, you might have a nanosecond to correct something,” Bailey said during our chat.
Here is the slightly less than 51-minute episode. Below, some notes if you want to portion it out to get to parts you might find more interesting, i.e., the ones with less from me, ha-ha.
The Intro
0:00-8:45. “You wish you could tell the story of Donovan Bailey without the words ‘Ben Johnson.’ ” The primary narrative around Bailey in the build-up to Atlanta was wondering how the other spike would drop. However, as Neil Acharya notes, those of us in the Xennial generation saw him as part of an ascendant Black-built culture in sports, music, and entertainment — “he’s Canadian, he’s Caribbean, and he’s putting Americans in their place.”
To us, it really feels like the media didn’t see that forest for all the Ghosts of Seoul 1988 and The Dirtiest Race In History. There has been a significant reframing of what really happened and how Johnson was selectively enforced. In 2018, Mary Ormsby published an investigative article in The Toronto Star that points to some inconsistencies that should have led to Johnson keeping his gold and his world record.1
8:45-15:30 “Bailey tells his story with intent.” Neil mentions how we learn some of the background of Bailey that might not have got great play back in the day. Bailey was a bit like the classic Clint Eastwood character — he rode in to save the village, i.e., erase the Ghost of Ben, and seemed to leave as quickly as he arrived.
The Interview
15:30-23:15. “The book for me is to show how Jamaica is a melting pot, Canada is a melting pot, and I’m not going to be uncomfortable anywhere.” The early section details how Bailey really went into the book project with an attempt to explain where he was coming from. He notes things are a bit more unrestrained for athletes to have control of their narrative.
23:15-31:15 “The paranoia’s probably still here.” We got to the stress Bailey was under as The Guy Following The Guy early. This is definitely the first time someone has used “cortisol” in one of our conversations.
Johnson and Bailey were two Olympic cycles apart, and the surface-level comparisons were obvious. Both are Canadians, who were born in Jamaica and came of age in the Greater Toronto Area (Ben from the borough of North York, Donovan from Oakville). But Johnson was identified as a prospect in his teens. Bailey did not take up sprinting seriously until his mid-20s. In fact, he writes in the book that he did not lift weights until he was identified as a potential Olympian in a winter sport — bobsleigh.
One of Bailey’s relay teammates, Glenroy Gilbert, was a bobsledder for Canada at the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics. Gilbert, who ran the second leg on the ’96 relay, was truly the glue that kept the team together during a stressful week of competition.
31:15-37:30. During the years before Atlanta ’96 and just after, Bailey was coached by Dan Pfaff, who was based in Baton Rouge, La., and Austin, Texas. There is a treasure trove of coaching talks with Pfaff on YouTube.
Another coach Bailey mentions is Wayne Allison, longtime coach of the Sheridan Bruins of Ontario Colleges Athletic Association men’s basketball. Bailey hooped for Sheridan before going into his business career.
37:30-50:48. We get to the space shuttle question, and a Lightning Round, where some sprinting names get dropped. In case you are a not a big track-and-field fan:
Noah Lyles, the new world 100m champion, took some chiding for saying the NBA champion is not a true world champion. Canada is covered in men’s hoops glory either way. The NBA champion Denver Nuggets’ lead guard, Jamal Murray, is Canadian. The Toronto Raptors have a guard, Dennis Schröder, who led Germany to the gold medal at the 2023 FIBA Basketball World Cup. Win-win!
Lamont Marcell Jacobs of Italy, if you need a refresh, is the reigning Olympic men’s 100m gold medallist. Canada’s Andre De Grasse is the reigning 200m champion.
Ferdinand Omanyala of Kenya, is the reigning African 100m champion and was seventh at the 2023 worlds.
Donovan Bailey’s autobiography, Undisputed: A Champion’s Story, is available wherever fine books are sold. Please visit Donovan Bailey’s page on SportsLit.ca, where there is a catalog of all our evergreen content and links to buy the books.
It might be tough to find, but the definitive almost-in-real-time take on the Johnson scandal and subsequent Dubin Inquiry came from Johnson’s coach, the late Charlie Francis. Three years after Johnson’s disqualification from Seoul ’88, Francis wrote Speed Trap: The Inside Story of Ben Johnson and the Biggest Scandal in Olympic History (HarperCollins, 1991). Francis, per one reviewer-runner, “acknowledged the irresolute state of drug use in professional athletics worldwide.” Hmm. Maybe more people should have listened to him.
Fun Episode, great notes.