TORONTO (AP) – Ben Johnson loves Road Runner. It’s his favorite cartoon because the “Beep, Beep” bird is fast and never gets caught by Wile E. Coyote.

Johnson was fast. Then he got caught.

It was the most blatant case of doping in history, and it changed the way people regard athletes. Johnson became the symbol of all that is wrong with sports.

Fifteen years after his world record and 100-meter gold medal at the Seoul Olympics were wiped out by steroid use, Johnson still is regarded by much of the world as the ultimate drug cheat. That view, however, may have been tempered by the sport’s most recent drug scandal.

Last summer’s unmasking of the new steroid THG could result in suspensions for track and NFL stars, and already has sparked a grand jury probe that touches five sports. Still to be determined is whether double world sprint champion Kelli White will have to forfeit gold medals for using another banned drug.

“It makes me look good. It shows the world that these things are going on all these years. What they did to me was wrong,” Johnson says in an interview with The Associated Press. “One guy came up to me on the street and said, “Hey, Ben, in ’88 you got raped.’ That’s the way I still feel.”

Johnson, who turns 42 on Tuesday, is still sprinting and hoping for one more chance at vindication. He’s still fast, still in great shape. His fortune is gone, and so are the fancy cars. He lives with his mom.

He hopes a re-race of that 1988 Olympic final, an idea being floated by South Korean businessmen and promoted by Johnson’s former agent, will give him a final big payday and a chance to clear his name.

“Most people would have committed suicide, but I’m not going to do that,” he says, his voice filling with emotion and his habitual stutter emerging. “God gave me the strength and courage to come through this.”

Many Canadians agree with Johnson that he was a victim. Though they don’t condone his drug use, they feel he was singled out as a demon. And they feel it’s time to let Johnson move beyond his past.

“Nobody wants to forgive and forget. And I think he should be forgiven for his mistakes,” says Desai Williams, a Canadian who finished sixth in that 1988 Olympic final. “Nobody’s perfect.”

John Hoberman, a University of Texas professor who has written extensively on drugs in sports, says Johnson was manipulated by a system in which drug usage was covered up and often condoned by coaches, trainers and sports officials.

“Was he responsible as an adult individual for not cheating? Of course he was,” Hoberman says. “But what gets overlooked is that successful elite athletes who get caught cheating are hung out to dry as individuals. There are entire strata of people who benefit from it. Doping is a social system that includes at least half a dozen different categories of actors.”

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Johnson arrives at the Metropolitan Toronto Track and Field Centre on this wintry afternoon wearing several layers of sweats. He strips down to a Gold’s Gym tank top, exposing buff shoulder and arm muscles.

“So how do I look for a 40-year-old guy?” he asks.

He opens a duffel bag and takes out a cookie jar-sized container with the handwritten instructions “1-2 scoops plus water while training” on the cap. It’s an “energy drink,” he explains. The label says it’s vanilla-flavored carbs.

There’s also a jar containing amino acids – he takes 10 such tablets right after training – and another with what the label says is a fruit-punch flavored “anabolic training drink.”

Johnson, still banned from approved international competition after flunking three drug tests, says everything he takes now is legal and healthy.

“If I was taking anything, I would be running 9.8 (seconds) now,” he says.

He jogs twice around the 200-meter track, waving as he passes Charlie Francis – the coach who gave him steroids in the 1980s and now is a pariah in the sport. Then he does stretches, push-ups and throws a medicine ball against a wall.

“Ben will train an hour before he dies. If God called Ben to heaven, Ben would say: “Can you wait a few minutes? I have to run a few laps,”‘ says Morris Chrobotek, his former agent. “We are all addicted to something, and not all addictions are bad. We’re all looking for something to do in life that makes you feel good. Training makes him feel good. He likes looking good.”

Johnson arrived in Toronto from his native Jamaica with his mom in April 1976 as a 98-pound weakling. He was 14 years old, fast but skinny.

He soon discovered the nondescript brick building on York University’s campus that has become a magnet for Canadian track and field stars. Over the past 24 years, the MTTFC has become his second home.

He now weighs 180 pounds, eight pounds above his Seoul weight. He hopes to get down to 174 in time for the 1988 re-run, which Chrobotek says will happen in August and offer $2 million to the winner.

Even if that race never happens, Johnson will be a regular at the MTTFC field house. It was his refuge during the tough times of the mid-1990s, when he was broke, and now is a comfortable spot where everybody knows his name.

“He’s just a regular guy right now. We know what he did. He didn’t do anything anyone else wasn’t doing,” says Patrick Russell, a York student and aspiring decathlete who has known Johnson for the past four years.

Johnson, having finished his sprints and shaken hands with just about everyone in the building, moves to the weight room. He banters easily with guys grunting through their workouts, then does a few sets of bench presses – 10 reps, with the weight gradually increasing to 225 pounds.

He says he regularly squats 550 pounds – three times his body weight.

“When I go out in public, I have to look good,” he says during the rare interview, a two-hour chat that takes place while he’s working out. “It’s a good feeling, you look younger for the ladies.”

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After the 1988 drug scandal, Johnson tried a comeback at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics but was eliminated in the semifinals. Then he tested positive again in 1993. Canadian officials eventually overturned that case on appeal, but international track officials did not and banned him for life. Then Johnson flunked another drug test when he was found to have used a diuretic, which can mask performance-enhancing drugs.

Johnson was nearly broke when he met Chrobotek, who runs a Toronto airline business. Chrobotek gave him money and hired lawyers to argue on his behalf. Then he started trying to find work for Johnson.

Chrobotek got him a gig training Diego Maradona when the Argentinian soccer legend was trying to come back after cocaine problems. He found him a job training soccer player Saadi Gadhafi, the son of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. The younger Gadhafi played for Perugia of the Italian League until suspended this November for steroid use.

Chrobotek entered Johnson in a 1998 charity race against two horses and a race car (Johnson beat the car, lost to the horses). He took Johnson to Yale to speak to students about drugs in sports. He took Johnson to Jerusalem, where he wore a yarmulke at the Wailing Wall.

No longer his agent – they had a falling out due to the 1999 diuretic incident – Chrobotek remains Johnson’s friend and protector. He also came up with the idea of the Seoul re-race, which could make a lot of money for both of them.

“He’s not happy with himself,” Chrobotek says. “I think he’s unhappy because of all the things he’s accomplished in life that were taken away from him. A lot of people who accomplished less ended up with more.”

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“My mom’s always telling me I have one race left. And I kept asking her, “When is it going to happen?”‘ Johnson says. “I guess this is it.”

Chrobotek says several Korean businessmen want to reunite the field from the 1988 Olympic final for a re-run of history’s most infamous race. Johnson and Williams say they’ll run, and Chrobotek vows it will happen – and that there will be drug testing.

Chrobotek also insists it won’t be a bunch of overweight, over-the-hill guys waddling down a track.

“We’re going to show the world we’re not old, we can still fly,” Johnson says.

But Briton Linford Christie already has said he won’t participate in a re-run, and Carl Lewis – who took the gold medal that Johnson forfeited – is also not supportive. Lewis, who just finished filming a movie, wants to focus on acting, not a return to the track.

“I can say categorically he has not signed any contract. The probability of us signing a contract is probably less than 1 percent,” says Lewis’ longtime manager, Joe Douglas. “It would have to be a fortune. He does not want to run. He wants to concentrate on his acting career.”

Johnson says he’ll be running the 100 in about 10.2 seconds this summer, and guys who work out with him say he could break 10 seconds by August.

“I got one more race left,” Johnson says. “Just make sure this race comes off because I’m working out very hard.”