Usain Bolt lost one of his nine Olympic gold medals Wednesday when the International Olympic Committee (IOC) stripped Jamaica of their 4x100m relay win at the 2008 Beijing Games after Nesta Carter was caught doping.
The decision which follows the retesting of hundreds of samples from the Beijing event, means that Bolt, as Carter’s teammate, loses one of the three gold medals he won at that Olympics.
Carter was found to have tested positive for banned substance Methylhexanamine, which was once used in nasal decongestants but now is more commonly found as an ingredient in dietary supplements.
The loss of the relay gold deprives Bolt of one of his ‘triple triples’ — he won gold in the 100m, 200 and the 4x100m at Beijing and then went on to repeat the feat in London in 2012 and again in Rio last year.
The IOC said in a statement that in the case of Carter, 31, re-analysis of his 2008 samples “resulted in a positive test for the prohibited substance methylhexaneamine.”
The IOC Disciplinary Commission ruled that Carter “is found to have committed an anti-doping rule violation pursuant to the IOC Anti-Doping Rules applicable to the Games of the XXIX Olympiad in Beijing in 2008.”
As such, he “is disqualified from the men’s 4x100m relay event” and must return his medal while the team is likewise disqualified and must hand back their medals.
The IOC said that Russia’s Tatiana Lebedeva, who won silver in the women’s triple jump event and long jump, had also been disqualified following re-analysis of her samples which showed up positive for dehydrochlormethyltestosterone (turinabol), a substance on the world body’s banned list. – AFP.
