An Olympic gold medallist who cost Usain Bolt the ‘triple triple’ is now living a very different life after retiring from athletics under a cloud.
Bolt, 39, is without doubt the greatest sprinter to have ever competed at the Olympic Games.
The Jamaican first featured at the Athens Games in 2004 and was tipped to perform well, but ultimately was eliminated in the first round of the 200 metres after sustaining a hamstring injury.
Four years later, Bolt had a point to prove and took the Beijing Games by storm when he won the 100m, 200m and 4 x 100m relay crowns in China. In doing so, he also broke world records in the respective events.
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Bolt maintained his three titles at London 2012, setting a then-Olympic record of 9.63 seconds in the 100m, with the relay team setting a new world record of 36.84s in the 4 x 100m. The Jamaican also won the 200m gold in London with a time of 19.32s.
In 2016, Bolt was approaching the end of his career but still had a lot left to give and proved this by becoming the first athlete to win three gold medals in three consecutive Olympic Games despite some backing American Justin Gatlin to pip Bolt to glory.
This proved to be the 39-year-old’s final Olympic Games before he retired the following year when he crashed out of the 4x100 m relay with injury at the summer of 2017 World Athletics Championships in London.
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Earlier that year, Bolt learned that he and his fellow relay teammates from the 2008 Games had been stripped of their gold medals from the event as Nesta Carter failed a drugs test.
Carter had a drugs test re-analysed nine years after he ran the first leg of the men’s 4x 100m relay.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) said Carter’s sample tested positive for the prohibited substance methylhexaneamine.
Michael Frater, Asafa Powell, Bolt and Carter were stripped of their gold medals as a result.
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Carter, now 39, appealed the decision, but it was upheld by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in 2018. The sprinter was banned for three months.
In 2021, Reuters reported that he was punished for a second “doping violation” when “Jamaica's Independent Anti-Doping Disciplinary Panel handed him a four-year ban for the use of the banned drug Clomiphene (testosterone booster)”. Carter officially retired from sprinting in August 2021.
Over four years on, he has taken a step back from public life but is still making money by other means.
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The 39-year-old is the host of a lavish property in Kingston, Jamaica named 'Carter's Nest Villa', which he advertises on Airbnb.
The three-bedroom property, boasting top-class amenities, will set you back between £150 and £300 per night, depending on when you visit, and you may even bump into the man himself.
Usain Bolt's honest verdict on Nesta Carter's doping violation
Despite Carter causing three of his teammates to have Olympic gold medals stripped for no fault of their own, Bolt was fairly placid when talking about the ruling during an interview back in 2017 but admitted that it may have "taken a little bit away" from him if he was stripped before he achieved the 'triple triple' in Rio.
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“I haven’t spoken to him [Carter],” said Bolt when speaking to 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.”
Topics: Usain Bolt, Olympics, Athletics, Jamaica
Luke Davies