Usain Bolt has lost one of his nine Olympic gold medals on Wednesday after Jamaican teammate Nesta Carter was found guilty of doping at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Carter’s positive test for a banned substance means Bolt must return one of his nine Olympic gold medals. So Olympic gold champion Usain Bolt can no longer claim to have done the “triple-treble”.
The decision came after Carter was found to have tested positive for methylhexaneamine (an energy-boosting ingredient used in many dietary supplements), a strictly prohibited substance, in re-analysis of samples from the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said on Wednesday.
IOC sanctions two athletes for failing anti-doping test at Beijing 2008 https://t.co/r23rfDwJn0 pic.twitter.com/FViaE9YI9K
— IOC MEDIA (@iocmedia) January 25, 2017
The 30-year-old Bolt completed an unprecedented ‘triple triple’ in Rio last summer, becoming the only man to win all three sprint events at three Olympic Games. He won gold in the 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay to add to his successes in the same events in Beijing 2008 and London 2012. But in Beijing 2008 in the 4x100m relay the Jamaican won gold will no longer count after governing body of IOC disqualified the Caribbean island’s sprint team Wednesday.
Bolt has not commented on the news but speaking last summer, he described he would accept the IOC’s verdict and would have no problem giving back a medal if they confirmed the positive test.
Following the news in June, Usain Bolt told Reuters: “It’s heart-breaking (the positive test) because over the years you’ve worked hard to accumulate gold medals and work hard to be a champion… but it’s just one of those things.
“Things happen in life, so when it’s confirmed or whatever, if I need to give back my gold medal I’d have to give it back, it’s not a problem for me.”
Nesta Carter, 31, who is also the sixth fastest 100m runner of all time, with a 100m personal best of 9.78sec set in 2010, he helped Jamaica set a world-record time of 37.10sec in Beijing Olympic. The 31-year-old Carter had been a vital member of the all-conquering Jamaican 4x100m team, claiming gold medals alongside Bolt at the 2008 and 2012 Olympic Games and the 2011, 2013 and 2015 world championships. There is no suggestion that a doping violation was committed during any of those competitions.
Traces of the strictly prohibited substance Methylhexanamine were found in Carter’s doping sample when 454 frozen blood and urine selected samples from the 2008 Games were retested by the IOC last year, but it took until today for the International Olympic Committee to confirm the news.
All four members of Jamaica team– Bolt, Carter, Asafa Powell and Michael Frater, will also be stripped of their medals.
The decision means that the Trinidad & Tobago team are set to be promoted to gold medal winners in the Beijing 4×100 in Jamaica’s place, while Japan move up to silver and fourth-placed Brazil earning bronze.
Russian long and triple-jump athlete Tatiana Lebedeva, 40, who was retroactively disqualified from the 2008 Beijing Olympics and was stripped of both silver medals after reanalysis of her anti-doping samples tested positive for the prohibited substance dehydrochlormethyltestosterone. In Beijing 2008, she ranked second in the women’s triple jump event and the women’s long jump event, the IOC also announced on Wednesday.
The IOC conducted 1,243 retests of samples from the Beijing and London Olympics Games, with 98 results returning positive for doping.
