MERRITT, ANOTHER SELFISH AMERICAN KILLING TRACK AND FIELD

When Americans began doping in earnest back in the 1950s, it was in response to the institutionalized doping that was in full stride in East Germany and Russia.
The Eastern Bloc countries produced a long line of superhuman athletes – female athletes especially that established records that might not be broken for another century.
But you have to hand it to the Americans; they always have to be the best so it was just a matter of time before they were engaged in not only producing the world’s best super athletes but they were also engaged in some of the greatest levels of hypocrisy in terms of sports, the world has ever seen.
During the 1980s, US athletes, especially athletes like Carl Lewis were most vocal about other countries whose athletes were doping.
That was until Dr Wade Exum revealed that Lewis and hundreds of other athletes, US athletes, were allowed to compete in international competition despite having failed drug test after drug test.
My sources had told me back in 1988 that Lewis was not alone. According to what I was told more than two decades ago, several top flight US star athletes tested positive in the lead up to the Seoul Olympics. Those athletes included Lewis, who failed not one, but three drug tests that year, but were still allowed to compete in Seoul.
After the Berlin Wall fell and for the most part the extremely high levels of doping in track and field, the US assumed the lead in producing athletes that were capable of performances that would cause jaws to drop.
The rest of the world fell to its knees at the might of the US track and field programme all the while not recognising that their own fall was not that far away.
Enter Victor Conte, who blew the lid off the incredibly high levels of doping that permeated not just track and field but US sport on a whole. Some of the biggest track stars were exposed. The list read like a who’s who. Marion Jones, Tim Montgomery, Regina Jacobs, Kelli White, Alvin and Calvin Harrison, Justin Gatlin, and many others, were either forced into retirement and had their international gold medals stripped.
All the while, track and field suffered the most as star after star after star were proven to be cheaters.
Over the past two years Usain Bolt and several others including Yelena Isinbeyeva, Allyson Felix, Shelly Ann Fraser, and Veronica Campbell Brown have helped take track and field off life-support and given it legs to walk on its own once more.
That was until World and Olympic 400 metre champion Lashawn Merritt admitted this week that he had failed three drug tests and has accepted a provisional suspension.
According to Merriit, he ‘foolishly’ had been taking an over-the-counter male enhancement drug for the past couple of years. That product it seemed contained DHEA, a substance that appears on the World Anti-Doping Association’s list of prohibited substances.
This is a sickening blow to a sport that barely has a pulse in the United States. The timing also could not have been worse.
The Penn Relays conclude today in Pennsylvania and the world’s fastest man is anchoring a Jamaican team running against the ‘mighty’ USA. It should have been a celebration of the resurgence of the sport but in the back of the minds of everyone who watches that race today is the fact that yet another American track star has been found to be less than honest.
“I am disgusted by this entire episode,” USA Track & Field (USATF) chief executive Doug Logan said in a statement.
You know what Doug, the rest of the world is too.