By Sue-Ann Wayow
AFTER 14 years, Trinidad and Tobago has bagged another Olympic gold medal.
Richard Thompson, Marc Burns, Keston Bledman, Emmanuel Callender and Aaron Armstrong all received their medals in a short Olympic medal reallocation ceremony at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland on Tuesday.
The men had competed in the men’s relay 4×100-metre team at the 2008 Beijing Olympics initially placing second.
Jamaica led by world-famous sprinter Usain Bolt had placed first.
However, in 2017, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) found that Jamaica team member Nesta Carter had violated the anti-doping code by testing positive for methylhexaneamine.
Jamaica was disqualified and Team TTO was announced as the new winners.
The ceremony was held in line with the Olympic Medal Reallocation Principles established in 2018 and follows the IOC Executive Board’s decision to reallocate the gold medal after the disqualification of the Jamaican team, IOC’s website stated.
IOC president Thomas Bach spoke at Tuesday’s ceremony.
The athletes who were accompanied by family members, all received their medals and a bouquet of flowers from president of the TT Olympic Committee Diane Henderson.
Thompson described the team’s emotions on receiving the medals.
He said, “I am very excited and relieved at the same time. This has been a long time coming. We should have originally won these medals 14 years ago, but the circumstances were beyond our control. We are happy that the IOC acted with immediacy and all the relevant bodies continued to do everything they could for the integrity of the sport and the Olympics in general.”
Thompson explained how special it was to have the ceremony at The Olympic Museum.
He said, “When you see some of the names that are on the wall here, like Jesse Owens, Michael Phelps, Michael Johnson, Roger Federer – they are greats, they go beyond just sport, they have the ability to reach people from all walks of life and different parts of the globe. So, it is a huge honour for us to be here to donate items of ours as well from the final, and to have a space alongside these people.”
