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False Positive (2024)
FILM
United States 2024 · 101 min
Ismail Al-Amin
<p dir="ltr">He was one of the biggest track and field stars in the world, a talent in his prime on top of his sport. But when Butch Reynolds took a drug test in Monaco in the summer of 1990, his career was upended, and his life was forever changed. Yet then and now, the facts of the case shed more than considerable doubt on what happened – instead revealing the tale of a man falsely accused and still compelled in many ways to fight to clear his name all these years later.</p>
<p dir="ltr">FALSE POSITIVE, directed by Ismail Al-Amin, tells Reynolds’ story in full, beginning with his childhood in Akron, Ohio, and then his sudden emergence as a star at Ohio State, when in 1987, he ran a stunning 44.10 at a 400-meter race and turned professional soon thereafter. Barely a year later, the 24-year-old Reynolds was in Zurich in August of 1988 when he smashed the world record in the event with a time of 43.29. A month afterwards, he’d finish a disappointing second in the 400 meters at the Seoul Olympics, but would win a gold as part of the American relay team. His career, it appeared, was just taking off.</p>
<p dir="ltr">But then came the revelation of the positive test for nandrolone, a steroid, and a two-year suspension by the IAAF, track’s international governing body. It was two years after Ben Johnson’s notorious positive test at the Seoul Games, and the sport was eager to show the world how fiercely it was fighting to keep itself clean. Only when Reynolds declared his innocence, and his conviction to fight his case, what would be laid bare would be a case with any number of irregularities, and a system that failed to afford athletes due process, and was ripe with conflicts of interest that created an atmosphere of a kangaroo court.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Eventually, when track’s governing body refused to accept his appeal, Reynolds took his case through the U.S. court system, which led to a fiasco at the 1992 U.S. Olympic trials, with officials delaying the 400 meters for days with Reynolds’ eligibility – and its impact on his rivals – flip-flopping with a series of judicial rulings and capitulations from track officials, all ultimately culminating with the IAAF banning Reynolds from the actual Olympics in Barcelona.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Even when his suspension was completed a month after those Games, Reynolds never recovered what he had lost, finishing out of the medals at the 1996 Atlanta Games at the age of 32. It would take years for him to put his life back together, and to this day, the ban continues to shadow his legacy. As FALSE POSITIVE makes clear, when it comes to a story like his, the real truth is found beyond the headlines. And it’s that truth that ultimately defines who a person really is.</p>
