(Toronto) The men’s 4 x 100 meter relay that won the bronze medal at the Tokyo Olympics last summer has finally received its silver medal, the Canadian Olympic Committee announced in a press release Thursday morning.
Posted at 10:23 a.m.
This change follows the disqualification of the Great Britain team, whose second place was officially withdrawn after one of its members obtained a positive doping test result revealing the presence of prohibited substances.
The news was confirmed last month by the British Olympic Association, which then said it had received an official request to return the silver discs to the International Olympic Committee.
The request was sent after the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled against British sprinter Chijindu Ujah in February.
Ujah was part of the British relay along with Zharnel Hughes, Richard Kilty and Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake. It had finished second behind Italy last August, only 1 hundredth of a second.
The sample provided by Ujah after the race, however, detected traces of two banned substances, ostarine and S-23, which are actually selective androgen receptor modulators for muscle framework.
The Canadian team of Jerome Blake, Aaron Brown, Andre De Grasse and Brendon Rodney finished third in the final with a time of 37.70 seconds. China, which had followed at the foot of the podium, will therefore inherit the bronze medal from the Canadians.
“We are happy that they are receiving the silver medal they deserved in the men’s 4x100m relay at the Tokyo 2020 Games. While it is disappointing that we are still seeing doping cases robbing athletes of their moment during the Games, this reinforces the importance of the integrity and protection of clean sport,” said COC President Tricia Smith.
Canada won a medal in the men’s 4x100m relay at the Olympic Games for the second time in a row, after winning bronze in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
Moreover, it was the fourth medal in Canadian history in this event, obtained 25 years after the Canadian victory at the Games in Atlanta in 1996.