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.
Norway is not a country that regularly produces the fastest sprinters in the world. However, there was an exception in the case of Aham Okeke. He first tested positive in 1994, but he returned to the track and field scene.
The Nigerian native finally gave up in 2006 when he admitted that a doctor had injected him with testosterone to speed up treatment for a muscle injury before the World Championships in Gothenburg. “It was just a desperate attempt to reach the championships,” Okeke later admitted at a press conference.
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