It simply never ends. Doping has always been part of sport and it will continue to be. It can definitely help some athletes run, jump or throw faster. Sprinters Tyson Gay and Asafa Powel, who got caught in 2013, have been big fish, but they certainly weren’t the first or last to get caught in an anti-doping net.
While athletics has written many great stories in the past, there are some dark doping chapters in its history. We can probably find the most sinners among sprinters. Since the 1980s, the best runners on the shortest cross-country courses have been confronted with doping suspicions. While most of them remained adamant that they were clean, some of them admitted over time (often under the pressure of evidence) that they had taken banned substances. In the following, you will find an overview of the biggest doping scandals in sprinting history.
Linford Christie was the first European to run the 100 under ten seconds. He has Olympic, European, World and Commonwealth Games gold in his collection. He also tested positive for pseudoephedrine at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Christie got away with it, though – with 11 of the 21 anti-doping commission members voting to pardon him on the grounds that he had unknowingly taken the substance in a drug.
He said goodbye to the Great Britain national team in 1997 but continued to accept invitations to athletics meets and compete. Following a race in Dortmund, Germany, he had tested positive for the steroid nandrolone in 1999 and was given a two-year suspension.
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