Some may have believed they had already covered the marquee event of the 1988 Seoul Games - the men’s 100 metres final on September 24 in which Canada's Ben Johnson had destroyed a field including defending champion Carl Lewis in lowering his own world record to 9.79sec. They were wrong.

Had he not raised his right forefinger to the sky in crossing the line Johnson would surely have run even faster; but even allowing for this, he was the first man under the sprinting landmark of 9.80.

Three days later, however, the 26-year-old from Falmouth, Jamaica had embraced another landmark in becoming the first man to lose an Olympic athletics title for doping.

The Olympic Doping Control Center in Seoul reported that Johnson's urine sample contained the banned steroid stanozolol and he and his new world record were disqualified.

Press pandemonium. Apartment and hotel doors were hammered upon. Phones rang and urgent conferences were held. Keyboards clattered. Cigarettes were smoked, furiously. Some alcohol may also have been taken - before, during and after. Oh yes. This was big.

At the time the news broke I was working on the sports desk at The Guardian, and we were soon fielding the admirable responses of athletics correspondent John Rodda and feature writer Frank Keating to the developing story that was being told all around the world.

For many, no doubt, hearing of Johnson’s positive test was merely confirmation of the suspicion that had been raised about his performance at the previous year’s World Championships in Rome, where he had trounced the previously unbeatable Lewis to lower the world record to 9.83.

Speaking to the BBC after that defeat, American Lewis said: "There are gold medallists at this meet who are on drugs, that [100 metres] race will be looked at for many years, for more reasons than one."

Johnson's response was: "When Carl Lewis was winning everything, I never said a word against him. And when the next guy comes along and beats me, I won't complain about that either."

A year on, and all that innuendo had hardened into fact.

On the day of the disqualification, Keating - who died in 2013 - wrote: "So perhaps, we should have been suspicious - as indeed we were. But excitement of the moment readily files conjecture to the back of your mind and submerges cynical suspicion.

"But what do we tell our grandchildren now? Wide-eyed innocents on your knee should not have to ask why Stanozolol makes a man run faster…

"Will they grow up to know only that to break sport's classic barrier you have to be abusing yourself? Unless the authorities really have broken through with a new and highly sensitive testing kit - and unless Johnson, as he claims, was nobbled - then the now former champion or his advisers must have been astonishingly lax at not coming off the drug in time or not using a ‘masking agent’ to hide its use in the bloodstream."

Keating’s report, published on September 28, had posed a wider question at the start.

"I do not know how many Olympic competitors say their prayers night and morning as a matter of course, but I bet a heck of a lot more than usual woke up to Seoul's chilly grey dawn yesterday and, with a shiver, offered thanks: 'There but for the grace of God go I.'"

He went on to reference a recent guess by Prince Alexandre de Merode, then chairman of the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) Medical Commission, that around six per cent of athletes at the Games were taking performance-enhancing drugs.

The urine sample given by Johnson that had been tested after the final had shown up "a chronic suppression of his adrenal functions" - an indicator of long-term ingestion of artificial steroids, which convinces the body that it does not need to bother producing any of its own.

But if that fact pointed towards Johnson’s guilt, the fact that it was stanozolol which had shown up in his test, in large quantities, was problematic. Not for the IOC, which banned him for two years. But for those in Johnson’s camp who, subsequently, would be outright in their admissions that he had been doped for the reason proffered by all those who dope - that is, to keep up with all the others who were believed to be doing it.

Neither Johnson’s coach Charlie Francis, who remained an unabashed apologist for doping until his dying day, nor the man who administered his doping programme, doctor Jamie Astaphan, claimed to understand the finding.

At the enquiry set up in Canada in May 1989 under the direction of Government Chief Justice Charles Dubin, Johnson admitted he had lied about taking drugs, and that he had also been taking drugs when he had broken the world record in 1987. As a result, not only was his performance in Seoul annulled, but he was also stripped of his gold and previous world record from Rome.

Yet Astaphan insisted at the enquiry that he had not given the sprinter stanozolol. This steroid’s main function is to build muscle, and therefore is something to use during the months of preparatory training but not in a competition. However, the high level of stanozolol in Johnson’s sample suggested it had been taken in the days shortly before he raced. As such it would have been highly detectable, as it requires a period of 14 days to clear the body’s system

Johnson’s camp insisted he had had his last shot of steroids on August 28, 26 days before the final. But they said it was furazabol, not stanozolol, which was the drug at the centre of his programme. And, puzzlingly, later laboratory tests showed that the stanozolol in Johnson’s sample was pure. Stanozolol that has been ingested and urinated would be a broken-down version of the drug.

Astaphan later commented that in November 1987, Francis had given Johnson and his training partner Angella Taylor-Issajenko 16 milligrams of steroid in tablet form - four tablets over two days - and both athletes reacted with cramp so bad that they had to take Valium.

"And now, because of the high level Ben tested positive for in Seoul, the suggestion is that he took more than four tablets within 48 hours of the race? It just doesn’t make sense, even a child can see it," he added.

At the enquiry, Astaphan speculated that Johnson may have panicked and taken a banned substance during the Games. Morris Chrobotek, a lawyer who represented Johnson, later commented: "I know that Ben was purchasing stuff from other people. I know that because he told me."

Johnson, meanwhile, contended that someone not unconnected with his American rival had spiked his drink. He returned to the sport in 1991, but one year after failing to make the 1992 Olympic 100m final he was banned for life after testing positive for illegal levels of testosterone.

Speaking 25 years after his Seoul run, Johnson maintained: "It’s only cheating if you’re the only one doing it. I’ve been trying to say it for 24 years. Almost every professional athlete does something."

"Not a lot has changed in the last 25 years," Johnson told me in 2013. "People are still testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs like they were when I was competing.

"Twenty-five years ago I knew that other people were doping and I had the decision of whether I should do it or not.

"Speaking for myself, I felt like I needed to try and please people in my camp. I felt like most of the athletes I was going to be competing against would be doing the same thing. Twenty-five years on, as an older man, I see people making the same mistake…

"Every time people talk about a doping positive people talk about Ben Johnson. But now I'm just trying to get the message across. I'm happy I'm doing this, deep down in my heart. When I was doing drugs I knew I wasn't doing it right.

"It happened to a lot of athletes in the early 80s. People started to talk to me about it in 1983, and I started on doping in 1984, round about March, April.

"I missed my shots very often during my cycle. My coach says, 'You must come in and get your shots. It's time in your plan.' Sometimes I did show up. But sometimes I didn't. I didn't feel comfortable taking drugs. I didn't feel right. I'm telling you how it was.

"There were some clean athletes out there, but back then you have to understand that I had said yes to steroids. I was trying to please some people in my camp. I didn't want to be a disappointment to them."