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How dare anyone downgrade Usain Bolt because of a relay-running teammate

27th January, 2017
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27th January, 2017
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It took a tick over 24 hours before a leading Australian newspaper headlined – “Bolt image tarnished as Jamaica stripped of gold”.

What the?

Nesta Carter, the lead runner of the Jamaican 4x100m track relay team, tested drug positive some eight years after their world record gold medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

Olympic rules clearly state that if one runner tests positive in a relay team, the entire team is stripped of their medals, medallist pins, and diplomas as if they didn’t exist.

In this case, Trinidad and Tobago will be the new gold medallist of the 2008 games, Japan the silver, and Brazil the bronze.

But to lump Bolt, the greatest track sprinter to ever strap on spikes with a cheating grub like Carter is close to defamation.

Bolt’s image is far from tarnished. In fact there’s worldwide sympathy that the legend has lost a coveted gold through no fault of his own.

And for the newspaper to only mention Bolt as being tarnished and neither Michael Frater or Asafa Powell, made the tarnished comment even worse.

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Usain Bolt is in the Don Bradman, Wayne Gretsky, Muhammas Ali, Michael Jordan, and Michael Phelps category – the absolute elite of the elite.

If any one of those icons ever tested drug positive, my lifelong and deep love of sport would be devastated beyond repair.

Yet Bolt would be the first to admit that track sprinters have been among the worst cheats in sporting history.

To describe Bolt’s image as tarnished is categorically wrong, and deserving of a public apology.

Why brilliant sportsmen have to cheat to compete defies description.

The grub list is headed by Canadian Ben Johnson who copped life for testing positive after winning 1988 Seoul gold over the 100m.

Other world class track sprinters should have been hit with life bans as well, but most have been bashed by a wet lettuce leaf, so where is the deterrent?

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American Justin Gatlin copped four years, while two Brits Linford Christie and Dwain Chambers only got two, as did Americans Tim Montgomery, and John Capel.

Worse still, Tyson Gay waslet off with one year, hardly worth reporting.

Those names are just scratching the surface on the grub list.

So while Usain Bolt is clean, his trophy cabinet is minus an Olympic gold that effectively stuffs up the history-making triplextriple Olympic gold.

And that stinks.

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