Last Friday, the current fastest man in the world – both on the track and for shopping – Christian Coleman, was informed by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) that his appeal to overturn the two-year ban imposed for missing three no-notice out-of-competition drug tests in a 12-month period, had failed. As such, he will miss this year’s Summer Olympic Games scheduled to be held from 23rd July to 8th August, in Tokyo, Japan.
It is a stinging blow to Coleman’s budding legacy, the heir apparent to Usain Bolt’s crown as the fastest man on the planet. Coleman, who clocked the world’s fastest time in the 100 metres dash in the last five years, 9.76 seconds, whilst sprinting to the gold medal at the IAAF World Championships in Qatar in 2019, failed to dodge the bullet this time around. In 2019, the American sprinter had wiggled out of the authorities’ grasp on three other breaches of the anti-doping whereabouts rules due to a technicality in the imprecise language of the anti-doping rule book.
However, the CAS has reduced the two-year suspension, which had been handed down by an independent tribunal of track and field’s Athletic Integrity Unit (AIU) in October 2020, to 18 months, citing that it found Coleman’s “degree of negligence to be lower than that established in the challenged position”.
Coleman did not dispute his first missed test on 16th January 2019, but he queried his filing failure on 26th April 2019 – it was adjusted four minutes after the testers showed up at his home stating that he was at the Drake Relays in Iowa, 700 miles away from home – and his whereabouts failure on 9th December 2019. His explanation in the latter instance was that he had gone Christmas shopping. The timelines Coleman provided for his absence from home that evening would certainly have made him the world’s fastest shopper, as he claimed to have returned home during the 60-minute time slot, ate, looked at television and then went shopping again, as two doping control officers patiently waited in vain outside in the dark for his return.
Unfortunately for Coleman, investigators reconstructed the timelines using his shopping receipts and found that Coleman had twisted the truth. Rather than accept his shortcoming, Coleman resorted to accusing the authorities of “trying to trap” him and questioned why the testers had not called him. The rules state that no call is necessary, and in this instance the doping officers had been specifically instructed not to call him because of his history of missed tests.
The AIU expressed surprise that Coleman had not learned from his previous close call with the regulators. “In fact, that is not at all what happened,” the panel stated. “Despite the narrow escape from a potential ban and despite the fact that the athlete knew that he still had two whereabouts failures on his record, and – as he accepted in the hearing – was on high alert, by 9 December, the athlete went shopping throughout his 60-minute slot.”
The cat and mouse game of catching drug cheats in sport is heavily weighted in favour of the athlete/sportsperson as the onus in on the anti-doping authorities to prove that the athlete in question is cheating, and the evidence bar requirements are placed very high. For instance, in the taking of the hugely popular synthetic hormones – testosterone and human growth hormone – sportspersons have resorted to “microdosing”, taking very small amounts which can still result in substantial benefits. The measuring of minute concentrations of drugs is extremely difficult, and for the sake of getting a positive test even more difficult.
Every athlete responds differently to testosterone doping. Elevated levels in some persons will return to normal much quickly than others, just as the benefits of the drug are beginning, making matters worse for the testers, who are always a step or two behind the drug cheaters’ chemists. Compounding this problem is the fact that because of their genes some athletes will naturally alter the way testosterone shows up in their urine. Chemists working with high-profile athletes can engineer synthetic testosterone at just the right ratio to beat the Carbon Isotope Ratio (CIR) testing which is designed to differentiate between natural and synthetic testosterone. When an athlete is suspected of testosterone doping the CIR test is applied, and while it is a costly and laborious exercise, it is not foolproof.
The chances of catching drug cheats are getting slimmer by the year. The introduction of the athlete biological passport in 2009, which tracks an athlete’s blood variables over time, combining various tests and random out of competition testing, (like the one that was scheduled whilst Coleman went shopping), are the only hopes of catching the elite cheaters.
The 25-year-old Coleman, who has never failed a drug test (Lance Armstrong didn’t either) was tested 14 times by the US Anti-Doping Agency in 2019 but seems to have a problem when updating his whereabouts form. Come this summer, he will no doubt be lamenting over the missed opportunity of adding an Olympic gold medal to his burgeoning collection of hardware.
Coleman, who earns almost seven figures annually from his sponsor Nike, did put a positive spin on the whole scenario that is worth noting for posterity. “While I appreciate that the arbitrators correctly found that I am a clean athlete, I am obviously disappointed that I will miss the Olympic Games this summer,” he was quoted as saying by Reuters.
Regardless of how fast Coleman runs, or how many records he breaks upon his return, those times will be viewed through tainted glasses by the true fans of track and field.
