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Twenty years ago, he was called the World's Fastest Man by North American media and Bullet Ben by the Britons.

Today, the most important handle Ben Johnson wants to hear on the anniversary of his controversial 100-metre run at the Seoul Olympics is “grandpa” – uttered by his three-year-old granddaughter, Micaila. He looks after her while his 20-year-old daughter is at school.

The passage of time has changed everything about Ben Johnson's life.

Once a young man who enjoyed partying and the late-night lifestyle, Johnson now lives in middle-class domesticity in Markham, Ont.

Twenty summers ago, Johnson ran to notoriety in front of 70,000 screaming fans in Seoul's Olympic Stadium and another billion on television. Canadians punched the air – one even told us he put his fist through a wall – at the spectacle of a Canadian becoming the world's fastest man ahead of U.S. favourite Carl Lewis.

But the awful truth of doping would make the glory short-lived and the stigma of cheating stick forever. As recently as a few weeks ago, he says, an International Olympic Committee functionary decreed that because of his lifetime ban from the Olympic Games, Johnson could not be used as a commentator in Beijing.

That's when he can still get angry, “when they don't even give me that chance to use my name.”

The fame, the money, the record all vanished with the dirty urine test. Whether or not anyone buys the conspiracy theory that Johnson was set up as a scapegoat for a field of drug-fuelled athletes, that all-consuming sprinter's life was over and a new one had to be reconstructed.

“I could have been angry. My mother always said to leave everything in God's hands and I'd get the courage to get through. It wouldn't be easy. It was hard, but I always believed,” Johnson said.

Sold off were the building site where Johnson once planned a mansion to house his entire family, and the fast cars, such as his treasured red Ferrari Testarossa – “it was one of the last ones sold by Enzo Ferrari himself, when I met him after the 1987 world championships in Rome,” Johnson said.

Those were the toys and the style Johnson could maintain in the heady days of record performances, big appearance fees and a world championship, days when Johnson's earnings could reach $400,000 a month. His former agent, Larry Heidebrecht said in Seoul that being stripped of the gold and the world record probably cost Johnson $20-million in endorsements over the next four years.

When the crash came, Johnson continued to live well for a time, financially supporting his mother, four sisters and nieces and nephews. He lived off some money he had invested before Seoul and the sale of the cars he owned. He continued to make a little appearance money from promoters for going to meets in Europe and Asia as a drawing card. A year remained on his lucrative contract with Italian shoe sponsor Diadora. That ended in 1989.

He also had some personal training contracts with high-profile clients – the pudgy and fading soccer star Diego Maradona and the soccer-playing son of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, Saadi Gadhafi. He was a running adviser to a few professional soccer teams. In 2005, he launched a line of men's and women's sportswear and casual clothes, dubbed the Ben Johnson Collection, but the label never took off.

It did nothing for Johnson's dignity that, in October of 1998, he was used to hype a fundraiser on Prince Edward Island in which he was lined up against a thoroughbred horse, a standardbred horse, and a race car. But he showed he could laugh at himself when he took the job as a pitchman for an energy drink named for the world's fastest mammal – but with a trenchant pun: “Cheetah.”

“Track and field was one way of making a living, but my father always said there's a million ways,” said Johnson, who was almost 27 at the time of the Seoul Games. “A house has many doors. I lost money, I lost a lot of money, but I could still make enough to live because God gave me strength and courage.”

“I knew I couldn't run forever and there had to be a life after track, so in some ways I was looking past the running career. I was looking forward to not having to train everyday. That was difficult, and when I didn't have to do that, I didn't miss it.

“The two-year suspension I had after Seoul, that was the best time I had in 15 years I was around track and field.”

His parents, Ben Johnson Sr. and Gloria Johnson, have died. So also have George Mario (Jamie) Astaphan, the physician who supplied Johnson's medications, and Ed Futerman, the lawyer who presented Johnson's case at the federal Dubin inquiry into sports cheating.

Johnson still goes occasionally to the track at York University in Toronto, where he trained for Seoul. He did some personal training and advising of young athletes bidding for sport scholarships, all for free. “I wanted to give something of my knowledge. I didn't take anything for it,” said Johnson, who never advised the steroid route for any of his charges. “If you want to get something in life, you've got to work hard. Nothing comes easy.”

Twenty years on, Ben Johnson's eyes aren't yellow, the tell-tale side effect of the steroids that were in his liver. “I avoid rich foods, chicken instead of red meat, I eat more vegetables. I weigh about 190 pounds, within 15 of what I weighed in Seoul. I try to keep my stress level at zero.”

His words, like his eyes, are more clear than they used to be. So are his thoughts. He's writing an autobiography entitled Seoul to Soul, which he hopes to have published before the end of the year. A promotion on his website promises “explosive new information and confessions” about Seoul and the aftermath.

“I'm trying to get the book done in the right way and clear up the negativity around me,” Johnson said.