Jamaicans and braces

The Bird's Nest held its breath on Saturday as Usain Bolt rewrote the sprinting rule-book and broke his own world record in the 100m final, but only when his samples have been returned marked "negative" from the laboratory to which they were taken under armed guard will anyone exhale with relief.

No one among the 91,000 in the stadium who watched the Jamaican streak into history wants to believe that what they saw was anything other than the product of precocious talent and hard work. But in a Games that has seen fake fans, fake singers and fake fireworks, questions will be asked as to whether the most eye-catching results are also artificially enhanced.

The sprinter was not the only athlete labouring under the weight of scepticism at the weekend. The world's best swimmers - including the double gold medallist Rebecca Adlington, who broke one of 24 world records to fall in the pool - and Britain's cyclists also find themselves facing cynicism. Drugs have corroded confidence to the point that exceptional athletes, the very people the Olympics are intended to celebrate, now face the impossible task of proving a negative to put themselves beyond suspicion.

Bolt is unquestionably blessed with lavish talent and has shown consistent progression in performance since he emerged as a teenage sensation in 2001. His curse is to excel in a discipline that has been so stripped of credibility by his predecessors. His lightning dash comes 20 years after the most notorious doper of all, Ben Johnson, produced an equally devastating performance in Seoul only to be revealed as a cheat within days. Linford Christie, the 1992 champion, tested positive for steroids at the end of his career and Justin Gatlin, the man Bolt deposed as Olympic champion, was subsequently banned. Sydney's sprint-double champion Marion Jones, meanwhile, is watching the Beijing Games from jail as a result of her association with the Balco laboratory.

Before the Games began John Fahey, president of the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada), said that Beijing needed a clean 100m to restore faith in the sport. If Bolt's sample is clean the IOC will know before he resumes his assault on the sprint double today in the first round of the 200m. Negative samples go unannounced and positives take up to 72 hours to be processed, so no news is good news.

Despite the weight of cynicism that attaches itself to sprinters, there are several reasons to have faith in what we saw on Saturday. Experienced doping observers apply four tests to establish suspicion; what the athlete does, what they say, who they associate with and their testing history. On these counts Bolt looks good enough to be true.

He has already been tested at least six times since he arrived in China, and had he failed any of these we would already know. The Jamaican team have been visited 36 times by anti-doping officials in what looks like a targeted operation aimed at sprinting's most progressive nation. Jamaican Olympic Association officials say that 20 of their athletes have been tested multiple times, including Asafa Powell.

Secondly, he has been on a consistent performance curve since 2001 when he won his high school 200m in 22.04sec aged 14 and was adopted into Jamaica's talent development programme. Sudden leaps and late-career advancement are viewed as suspicious, but Bolt has demonstrated only consistent brilliance in his career, albeit in the 200m rather than the shorter distance. Training methods for the two disciplines are broadly the same so the advances are informative.

Neither has Bolt's progress been accompanied by the whiff of impropriety as the IAAF monitors its leading athletes regularly and Bolt has been tested regularly. Finally, his feat received only praise from the athletes he left trailing in his wake. There was no one aiming daggers at him as Carl Lewis did at Johnson in 1988, instead there were only compliments. Everyone who was gripped on Saturday will hope it stays that way,

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Yes it is. They probably calculated that the glare from the braces would distract the US runners and get them to drop their batons in their races, or to trip over hurdles, or to be slow out of the blocks. Great strategy!

There are those who say the braces are used because of the jaw growth caused by HGH.

sfsdfdsf wrote:

Isn't it interesting how many of the jamaican sprinters wears dental braces?

yes.

in some ways i'm happy that drugs aren't the central focus of reporters covering track and field, as that would ruin the already meager growth in fan base.

however, i do wish that some reporter would ask the coaching staff about things like this. the US squad used to be just as bad if not worse, so it's not a US vs. non-US thing. i haven't noticed it with the US as much this year.

personally it makes watching bolt less enjoyable for me. bolt may well be clean. one of the biggest black marks against him in my opinion is the performance of the jamaican team as a whole, when coupled with the rampant sudden need for a bunch of 20-somethings to have braces.

Two thoughts:

- hopefully, with success comes opportunity ($$) and they are now just able to afford the dental work

- HGH as mentioned above (it makes me sick hearing references to Lewis and Griffith-Joyners records knowing they were both drug enhanced)

I new this would come up sooner or later. How many of the team have you noticed? I've only seen one. Also there's no evidence that HGH causes the jaw to grow to the extent that an adult would need braces.

Shelly Ann-Fraser and Melaine Walker have braces

"Also there's no evidence that HGH causes the jaw to grow to the extent that an adult would need braces."

-false.

it would be good if you saw the communities where these ladies come from before you criticise. As someone said earlier they are now in a position to afford to get braces let the people be and enjoy the talent on display.

nuff said.

Wilma Rudolph wore braces...on her legs...and she won!

I noticed a couple, maybe 2 or three. I also noticed that 2 or three of them looked like linebackers (merlene ottey?!) and that a small island country is sweeping and dominating countries with FAR larger populations and far better sytems in place for sprinting.

But hey, keep drinking the cool aid, I'm sure they just train harder and want it more, like the Russian 800 meter runners.

Kool Aid.

And Mike Phelps has a big jaw and Alan Webb has a big head and a hair piece! Interesting.

I've just thougt tho - if the Jamaicans are clever enough to benefit from a PED that IAAF/WADA can't yet detect, then I'd reckon they'd be clever enough to know that the anti-doping authorities woudl be aware of the potential warning signs that corretive dental braces can give. Then they'd be clever enough to realsie that the antidoping authorities would pick up on stuff like world records and sweeps of olympic sprint medals - and thus they'd maybe think, hey make sure the atletes take off their braces for these big global races thus avoiding any chance of anyone suspecting anything.

And maybe all of the Americans took off their braces for the games too. Maybe they took the syringes out of their asses as well. Maybe they took off their "Look at me I come from a country with a long history of doping." signs as well. Those American dopers are clever!

Very good post jareldulce and howclever.

If these Americans would only think with their minds and not with their emotions only they would actually realize that they really make no sense.

I think most Americans on this board art actually doing their country a great disservice and are portraying Americans as complete idiots.

No need to bash me, I am just exercising my right to free speech.

Long live American greatness (by all means necessary, whether it be taking drugs or tarnishing the accolades of others).

they are NOT clever at all. they are just doing what they always have done, and they are not the only ones.

again, marion jones never got caught. neither did michael johnson, but that is another story.

lower incisors wrote:

"Also there's no evidence that HGH causes the jaw to grow to the extent that an adult would need braces."

-false.

You might want to brush up your medical knowledge before you refute such claims.

Dr. legs wrote:

Wilma Rudolph wore braces...on her legs...and she won!

I used to have braces on ma legs. My momma called them "magic legs".