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.
A prominent sprinter from the turn of the millennium, he set the world record for the 100m in 2002 with a time of 9.78 seconds. The US Anti-Doping Agency accused him of doping before the 2004 Olympics. Nevertheless, Tim Montgomery still tried to make it to the Athens Games, but he failed. After he was found guilty, all his results since 2001 were annulled.
He confessed in 2008 to doping before the Sydney Olympics. “I was taking testosterone and growth hormones four times a month. I got a gold medal in the sprint relay, but I don’t have it because of my talent,” he told US TV channel HBO. Montgomery was sentenced to five years in prison for selling heroin in the same year.
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