Beijing Gold for T&T relay men

(Trinidad Guardian) It has been con­firmed, T&T will get its third Olympic gold medal.

On Friday, T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) pres­i­dent Bri­an Lewis re­ceived a cor­re­spon­dence from the In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee (IOC) say­ing that the T&T 4×100 me­tres men’s team of Richard Thomp­son, Ke­ston Bled­man, Marc Burns, Em­manuel Cal­len­der and Aaron Arm­strong have been up­graded from sil­ver to gold.

The medal comes 10 years af­ter the T&T team placed sec­ond at the Bird Nest Sta­di­um in Bei­jing, Chi­na. Nes­ta Carter ran the open­ing leg in the 4x100m re­lay fi­nal for favourites Ja­maica when Us­ain Bolt took the ba­ton third and helped Ja­maica win in what was a world record per­for­mance of 37.10 sec­onds. The Ja­maican team al­so fea­tured Michael Frater and Asafa Pow­ell.

In a fresh analy­sis of Bei­jing sam­ples by the IOC in 2016, Carter test­ed pos­i­tive for the stim­u­lant methylhexa­neamine. Ja­maica was dis­qual­i­fied and stripped of the re­lay ti­tle. Ear­li­er this year, Carter lost his ap­peal against the de­ci­sion to strip him and his Ja­maica team of Olympic gold af­ter a pos­i­tive drug test.

The Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sport  had ruled that the re-analy­sis con­firmed the pres­ence of methylhexa­neamine.