Controversial interview casting doubt on Jamaican sprint king Bolt resurfaces
American journalist Graham Bensinger has renewed the debate about the superior abilities of Jamaican athletes including the world’s fastest man alive, Usain Bolt.
The journalist recently shared on Tik Tok a preview of an interview he did with Victor Conte, founder and president of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO), a California-based sports nutrition centre. In the interview, Conte says he suspects that the athletic achievements of Usain Bolt and others on Jamaica’s Olympic track team can be traced to their use of illegal drugs.
In the interview, dated 2017 on YouTube, Conte, who pled guilty to charges from the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) of developing a banned steroid with the aid of bodybuilding chemist Patrick Arnold in 2005, is asked about the likelihood that Usain Bolt used illegal performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs). He answered that he became suspicious of Bolt and the entire Jamaica Olympic team when their speed and race performance improved exponentially over a very short period.
While he acknowledged Usain’s talent and admitted the sprinter probably could have broken the world record without using drugs, he also stated, “Any time you’re going from 9:79 seconds to 9:58 seconds, that’s a couple of meters here. It’s suspicious.”
Conte said based his suspicions on analyses of Bolt’s races by former Russian sprint coach Remi Korchemmy, whom he called a “very scientific guy.”
