Earthquake in world athletics. In the space of a few hours, Sunday July 14, two of the icons of world sprinting, the American Tyson Gay and the Jamaican Asafa Powell admitted to having been caught by the anti-doping brigades. Nothing less than two of the four best performers in history in the 100m. A bad blow for the first Olympic sport. At least in the short term.
In the long term, this double affair could prove to be saving. The day after its revelation, the International Athletics Federation reacted with a press release from its spokesperson, Nick Davies. In essence, the IAAF ensures that the credibility of its sport is strengthened each time a case of doping comes to light. Even more so when the cheater turns out to be a big fish.
“The IAAF’s commitment to the fight against doping in athletics is unwavering,” said the press release. The credibility of our anti-doping program, and of our sport of athletics, is enhanced, not diminished, each time we are able to uncover a new case, and we have the full support of every athlete, coach or official. who believe in clean sport. We have an ethical obligation towards the majority of athletes who believe in clean sport. It is for them that we have built a program which is rich, which seeks far-reaching, and which is sophisticated. The fact that we are capable of detecting and excluding from our sport athletes who have flouted our anti-doping regulations must be understood in this sense. »
Like cycling, athletics has the merit of research. At the risk, often, of seeing some of its crowned heads fall at the least auspicious moment. Above all, the fight against doping is now proving to be a priority in two of the most successful countries on the athletic planet: Jamaica and the United States.
In the first, the national anti-doping agency (JADCO) has in recent months singled out Veronica Campbell-Brown, the double Olympic 200m champion, Asafa Powell, but also Sherone Simpson, silver medalist in the 100m at the Beijing Games. In the United States, USADA will stop at nothing to do a major cleanup. Tyson Gay, who tested positive at his training site in Florida, is added to a list where the names of Marion Jones, Tim Montgomery, Justin Gatlin and Kelli White were already jostling. With 2279 tests carried out in 2012, athletics has become the most controlled sport in the United States.
Questioned by the media during his recent visit to Paris, Usain Bolt said he was “totally in favor” of the creation of an anti-doping laboratory in Jamaica. The fastest man in the world appears today well isolated, at the top of the world sprint, after the recent controls of Tyson Gay and Asafa Powell and those, more ancient, of Yohan Blake and Justin Gatlin. But we tremble at the prospect of his name one day joining the list of those excluded.
