As Usain Bolt continues his assault on the record books in China, we are reminded the marks he his toppling at the men who established them. Not only has Usain set new levels of greatness in both the 100- and 200-metre events, but the likeable Jamaican is the first man since the unlikable Carl Lewis in 1984 to win gold in both events in the same Olympic Games.
But this blog is not about Bolt, it is about Lewis, and how perplexing it is that the United States continues to celebrate his bogus accomplishments.
Lewis cheated, and the United States Olympic Committee has documents to prove it. But this is not new news. This is a refresher. It was originally reported in 2003 when a disgruntled former senior US doping official released documents showing that Lewis, along with two of his training partners tested positive for three types of banned stimulants at the U.S. Olympic trials prior to the Seoul Olympics in 1988 – the year he would eventually win the 100-metre gold in the wake of Ben Johnson’s positive test. In fact, Lewis was just one of more than 100 American athletes that tested positive in samples collected by the U.S.O.C. between 1988 and 2000, yet they went on to win a shameful 19 Olympic medals.
Lewis and his cronies appealed their positive test results to the U.S.O.C. at the time (remembering that Lewis was already the well-marketed poster boy for the U.S. Olympic team that year), and all were cleared, because the U.S.O.C. determined the positive results were inadvertent. The time between the positive tests, and the Seoul Olympics was a tidy two months – a hasty process that Dick Pound, the World Anti-Doping boss at the time, called “a joke” after pouring over the documents upon their release in 2003.
But you won’t hear any of that on NBC’s Olympic coverage that appears at times more like a high school pep rally than an Olympic broadcast, nor will you hear about it on Nike’s Olympic ad featuring that catchy Killers’ song, and a cameo by our man of the hour who got caught back in 1988. If Lewis was paid for that appearance in the Nike ad, it gives new meaning to the term “stealing money”.
So congrats to Usain, bringing us one step closer to forgetting about Carl Lewis, but we just wanted to set the grossly underpublicised record straight.
Too bad Lewis couldn’t find any performance enhancing drugs to take before he attempted to sing the U.S. national anthem at an NBA game in 1993.