Usain Bolt has admitted he ‘holds no grudges’ against former Jamaica team-mate Nesta Carter whose recent positive drug test subsequently stripped the ‘fastest man in history’ of one of his nine gold Olympic medals.
Bolt lost his title as a ‘triple-triple’ Olympic champion when Carter retrospectively tested positive for a banned substance in a re-analysis of urine and blood samples from the Beijing Games, thus voiding the 4 x 100m relay gold medals won by Bolt and his then team-mates.
Carter, the sixth fastest 100m runner of all time, ran the opening leg of the Olympic 4 x 100m final nine years ago as Jamaica stormed to victory in a then world-record 37.10 sec, helping Bolt to a clean sweep of sprint titles as he burst on to the global stage at his first Games.
Bolt stripped of 2008 Olympic medal after doping scandal
Almost one month on from since Carter tested positive for the prohibited substance methylhexaneamine, Bolt said he has not spoken to the disgraced athlete but holds no grudges.
“I haven’t spoken to him,” he said in a recent interview with CNN. “But I have no hard feelings. It’s just one of those things that happens in life.
“I haven’t gotten to talk to him to find out exactly what happened or what went down. So, until I see him, I can’t really say he did it on purpose or it was a mistake or I should be angry, you know what I mean.”
When asked if he feared he would lose more of his Olympic relay medals, Bolt replied: “I’m not worried about that. If I lose all of my relay Gold medals, for me I did what I had to do with my personal goals and that’s what counts.
“Maybe if it had come before the [Rio 2016] Olympics, maybe it would have taken a little bit away from me and I would have thought about it.
“But the fact that I got the chance to say ‘The Triple Triple’ it kind of made me feel good.”
Addressing his apparent nonchalance on the track, the Jamaican insisted that he puts plenty of work in behind the scenes. Bolt, who is now the only one of six sub-9.79 sec 100m runners not to have committed a doping violation, often cuts a relaxed and jovial figure before his major races but argued ‘no one’ can beat him when he’s in top shape.
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“I mean people always say I make it look so easy, but it’s not easy,” he added. “It looks easy because I put in so much work so when I get on the stage I execute very well and I tell people all the time: ‘If I’m in good shape. No one’s going to beat me’.”
Bolt returned to the track earlier this month as part of an All-Stars team that competed in the inaugural Nitro Athletics event in Melbourne.
The eight-time Olympic gold medallist was the star attraction as six teams of 12 male and 12 female athletes competed in a mixture of old and new events
