Francis was banned by Athletics Canada following his admissions at the 1989 Dubin inquiry that he had introduced Johnson to steroids.
At 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, athletes coached by Francis accounted for eight of the 14 medals won by Canada's track team.
He was also a vocal critic of the IOC testing procedure and claimed that performance-enhancing drug use is rampant within the sport.
Francis had claimed for years that elite athletes could not compete at the highest levels without steroids, but when the media became aware of Francis' association with Jones and Montgomery, he stated that he had never worked with such talented athletes and that they did not need steroids to succeed at the elite level.
Francis died on Wednesday May 12, 2010 at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto, Ontario, after a five-year battle with the disease shortly after a match had been found for stem cell therapy, according to statement from his family.