Sprinter Darrell Robinson said Thursday that Olympic gold-medal winner Florence Griffith Joyner bought growth hormones from him.
Griffith Joyner, who has consistently denied taking any banned substances, described Robinson's charge as remarks of a compulsive liar.Robinson detailed his dealings with Griffith Joyner in the West German magazine Stern. He also told the publication that he was told to take anabolic steroids by Tom Tellez, coach of the Santa Monica track club and of Olympic champion Carl Lewis.
He repeated the charge today on NBC-TV's "Today."
"I never gave him a dime for anything," Griffith Joyner said on the show. She was in the network's New York studio, while Robinson, who had been scheduled to be in the studio with her, was interviewed from Toronto.
Robinson said Griffth Joyner had asked to get growth hormones for her, because "I have connections," and paid him $2,000 in 20 $100 bills.
Griffith Joyner said: "Darrell, you are a compulsive, crazy, lying, lunatic."
Robinson, the 1986 national 400-meter champion, responded: "The truth will come out."
"I have known Darrell for many years. He's never been to my house and I've never been to his, but we have talked a lot on the track," Griffith Joyner said Wednesday night in an interview with The Associated Press. "There have been a lot of rumors that he has been a compulsive liar all these years, that he makes up stories."
Robinson said he was introduced to Griffith Joyner through her former coach, Bob Kersee, who Robinson met in 1987.
Robinson said Kersee told him he could get anabolics for him.
Kersee and Tellez weren't immediately available for comment.
According to the article, Kersee and his wife, heptathlon world record-holder Jackie Joyner-Kersee, met Robinson at a high school track and gave him a small bottle containing 100 oval-shaped pills.
When they met at the UCLA track, Griffith Joyner wanted to know everything that Robinson knew about anabolics, sources, manufacturers and, in particular, new products on the market, Robinson said. He added that Griffith Joyner was particularly interested in growth hormones.
Robinson alleges that Griffith Joyner asked him to look into the price of the hormones. He said that, when he told her it would cost "$2,000 for 10 cubic centimeters, she said "that's crazy."
Robinson quotes Griffith Joyner as saying, "If you want to make a million, you've got to invest a few thousand." Robinson says that a few days later, Griffith Joyner gave him a "wad of 20 hundred-dollar bills.
Robinson said he purchased the hormones and delivered them to Griffith Joyner on Venice Boulevard in Los Angeles in mid-March 1988.
"He claims in the article he met me once and I gave him money for drugs on Venice Boulevard," Griffith Joyner said. "It doesn't say the date. It just says March of last year. That's why I want the date, because I keep a diary of everything I do."
Griffith Joyner said she read the entire article and found many inaccuracies.
"He said he was in law school at UCLA, and he wasn't," she said. "I listened to his problems and I was there to talk to him, but not about drugs. That's so far out. That he would make up a story about drugs is unbelievable."
Griffith Joyner's business manager, Gordon Baskin, said legal action against Robinson would be considered.
Robinson said he was once in Tellez's office along with Lewis, Kirk Baptiste, Cletus Clark and Mark McNiel.
According to Robinson, Tellez walked over to a filing cabinet and pulled out a plastic bag containing small blue pills that Robinson believed to be anabolics. Robinson said he was the only one who left the bag behind.
On another occasion, Robinson said he saw a needle containing a milky-looking fluid being administered to Lewis in the track star's bedroom.
Last spring, Lewis, a six-time Olympic champion, told a U.S. congressional committee that he believed at least five gold medal winners in track and field at Seoul had used drugs, not including Johnson.