Gambling Ad uses Olympic sprinter Ben Johnson creates outrage
- Jason Sinogo
- May 19, 2017
- 1 min read
The Australian sports anti-doping authority was not amused after viewing a TV ad featuring former disgraced Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson that made "light of the use of performance-enhancing drugs."
Johnson, who was stripped of his 100-metre Olympic gold medal at the 1988 Seoul Games for steroid use, promotes a "juiced-up" mobile phone app for a gambling company. In the Sportsbet ad, Johnson makes a few doping-related puns including the line, "it tested positive for speed and power
again and again."
Other pumped up athletes are shown promoting the app.
"To use a known drug cheat such as Ben Johnson to advertise their product is utterly inappropriate," Australian federal sports minister Greg Hunt said on Monday.
The company, however, remains adamant in its defence of the commercial and will not pull the ad.
"Sportsbet does not condone the use of performance enhancing drugs ... [but] we make no apologies for injecting some humour into advertising," a Sportsbet spokesman told News Ltd media.
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