Is Usain Bolt’s 9.63-second 100m sprint (with a slow start off the blocks) too fast to be clean? More accurately, is a 100m final in which three medalists equaled or eclipsed Ben Johnson’s steroid-fueled 9.79 and fourth-place finisher Tyson Gay came extremely close at 9.80 too fast to be clean?  An article in Muscle Week tries to make that case.

Muscle Week revisits Bolt’s relationship with strength and conditioning coach Angel Hernandez. Hernandez changed his name. He is really Angel Heredia who was Source A in the the BALCO case and linked to multiple American track and field athletes caught doping. He is the same Angel Heredia shown obtaining steroids and injecting HGH in a German documentary and who told Der Speigel in 2008 that eight out of eight finalists in the 100m were doping and that “the difference between 10.0 and 9.7″ was drugs.

The article also points out how Olympic drug testing does not prevent cheating, just sets the guidelines in which it is managed. The normal testosterone : epitestosterone ratio is 1:1. WADA’s limit is 4:1. Athletes can thus quadruple their testosterone count with steroids and, with rigorous blood testing, keep their levels right at the limit to avoid detection. Only a dumb mistake results in a positive test.

Perhaps we should revisit why so many runners are pulling up with races won? It seems counterintuitive that cycling and other sports would be plagued by PED usage, yet sprinting would be squeaky clean. Truthfully, the question should not be whether Usain Bolt or other sprinters are clean, but how do we redefine clean in an era where we are just scratching the surface of what can be achieved with nano-technology and genetics?

[Photo via Getty]