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.
It was the first woman to win an Olympic medal for Jamaica. She won bronze in the 100 meters at the Moscow Games in 1980. She accumulated fourteen gold medals at the World Championships and another eight Olympic medals in the years that followed.
She tested positive for the steroid nandrolone in 1999 and was excluded from the 1999 championships in Seville. Soon after, following a review of a urine sample that did not contain an above-limit concentration of the steroid, she was reprieved. It was later revealed that the test was conducted using the wrong method, so Ottey should not have passed.
The Jamaican sprinter was accused of doping several times after 2000, but she still has a collection of all the medals she won during her long career sitting in a display case at home.
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