Bolt Stripped of Beijing Olympic Gold Medal

Usain Bolt has been stripped of one of his nine Olympic medals because of the doping offence of his teammate, Nesta Carter.
Bolt is no longer owner of the hallowed ‘triple-triple’ of Olympic sprint titles and will have to hand back the 4x100m relay gold medal won at Beijing 2008 alongside Carter.
The Jamaican had realised this was a possibility after it emerged last summer that Carter had retrospectively failed a drugs test from the Beijing Games nine years ago.
His worst fears were confirmed when the International Olympic Committee, on Wednesday, announced it was to nullify the result of the Jamaican 4x100m team and reallocate the gold medal to Trinidad and Tobago.
Japan will now be promoted to silver and Brazil bronze but the Great Britain team, which was disqualified in the heats, will be unaffected.
Carter ran the first leg for Jamaica’s 4x100m team and Bolt ran the third on the way to a gold medal inside Beijing’s Bird Nest stadium where he announced himself as a sprinting superstar.
But it has now emerged that Carter had taken the banned stimulant methylhexanamine.
Medical opinion varies as to how potent a drug methylhexanamine is, with one prominent professor claiming it is only slightly more powerful than a cup of coffee.
While Bolt is faultless in this unfortunate situation, a victim of his teammate’s cheating, Carter’s use of performance enhancing drugs again casts a shadow over Jamaica’s sprint medal factory.
In 2013 Veronica Campbell-Brown, Asafa Powell and Sherone Simpson all tested positive leading to suspicions as to how this tiny island became so dominant on the world stage.
There was much fanfare last summer when Bolt became the first person in history to clinch the ‘triple-triple,’ completing the task with victory in the relay inside Rio’s Joao Havelange stadium.
Having one of his medals taken from him, through no fault of his own, could mean the 30-year-old is even more fired up to win gold in the 100m at the London World Championships this summer, which will be his final major competitive event.
The confirmation of Carter’s positive doping tests means Bolt, whose world record is 9.58sec, stands alone as the only man to have run 9.79sec and not be tainted by a drugs ban.
The other five – Tyson Gay (9.69sec), Yohan Blake (9.69sec), Asafa Powell (9.72sec) and Justin Gatlin (9.74sec) – have all been banned for doping violations.
At London 2012 Carter was in the 4x100m team – this time anchored by Bolt – which won gold in a world record time of 36.84sec although that medal is not thought to be under threat.