Usain Bolt could lose one of his six Olympic gold medals after a Jamaica relay team-mate was reported to have retrospectively failed a drugs test taken at the Beijing Olympics.
Jamaican sprinter Nesta Carter has been named by the Jamaica Gleaner newspaper as one of the athletes whose re-examined samples from the 2008 Games showed an adverse result.
The newspaper reported on its website that the 30-year-old, an Olympic gold medallist in the 4×100 metres relay at Beijing and in London 2012, returned a positive test for the banned stimulant methylhexanamine when his ‘A’ sample was re-tested.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) re-tested 454 samples from the Beijing Games, with 31 A samples testing positive. Any possible sanctions will depend on the results of the re-testing of ‘B’ samples, which are awaited.
The IOC and the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) both declined to comment on the reports surrounding Carter when contacted by Press Association Sport. Carter’s agent and the Jamaican Olympic Association have also yet to comment.
Carter also won relay gold at the 2011, 2013 and 2015 World Championships, all alongside Bolt. Should Carter lose his Beijing Olympics gold, then it would almost certainly mean all of his relay team-mates including Bolt also forfeiting their medals from the event.
Nesta Carter reportedly fails 2008 doping retest, may impact Usain Bolt’s medal tally. https://t.co/Y0asZDqVge pic.twitter.com/uqIuwU8oPQ
— NBC Olympics (@NBCOlympics) June 3, 2016
Carter’s personal best over 100m of 9.78 seconds ranks him as the sixth fastest man in history and he also won bronze in the individual event at the 2013 World Championships.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) website lists methylhexanamine as a specified stimulant which is banned in competition.
WADA say it has been considered a stimulant since 2004 and was reclassified in 2011 to become a ‘specified substance’. It defines a specified substance as one which is more likely to be “susceptible to a credible non-doping explanation” and therefore can come with a reduced sanction.
News about Carter, if confirmed, would deal a further blow to the credibility of athletics, which is still looking to recover from the revelations about state-sanctioned doping in Russia, which has seen the country’s athletes banned from international competition.
A decision about Russia’s participation in athletics at the Rio Olympics in August will be made by the world governing body the IAAF on June 17.
The reputation of the men’s 100m, the sport’s blue-riband event, has also come under threat, with two-time drug cheat Justin Gatlin posing a serious, if so far unsuccessful, challenge to the domination of Bolt, dubbed the ‘saviour’ of athletics.
The re-testing of samples from the 2008 and 2012 Olympics were targeted at athletes who could potentially participate in Rio. The re-tests from London 2012 revealed 23 positives out of 265 samples.
The IOC has already confirmed the re-analysis programme from the two Games is to be extended, meaning the potential for more failed tests.
