Olympic champion Gabby Thomas demands drastic change to stop doping in athletics
During the past decade, nearly 400 Kenyan athletes have been suspended for doping-related offences, including women's marathon world record holder Ruth Chepngetich earlier this summer, while United States sprinter Fred Kerley is currently provisionally suspended for an alleged anti-doping whereabouts violation. Just this week, Ukrainian triple jumper Maryna Bekh-Romanchuk – who won silver at the 2023 World Championships – received a four-year ban for doping and India's 1500m champion Parvej Khan was handed a six-year ban for multiple whereabouts failures and a positive test for an illegal substance.
These are just a small number of the doping allegations that have clouded the sport in recent times and Thomas – who won gold in the 200m and also helped USA claim victory in the 4x100m and 4x400m relays at the Paris Olympics last summer – has proposed a radical solution.
Writing on social media, the 28-year-old wants lifetime bans for any coaches implicated in doping, rather than seeing them welcomed back into the fold.
'Doping coaches should be banned for life from coaching in the sport,' she wrote on Instagram. 'Whether you were banned while competing as an athlete or caught distributing as a coach (for some, both). I don't care, I don't care, I don't care. If you train under a coach who is known for doping (once, twice, or even three times for some) you are complicit. That's my stance.'
Thomas added further thoughts on X (formerly Twitter) and said that she is desperate to see the sport of athletics improve its image around these issues while she's an active athlete.
'When I graduated from college, I came into this sport sooo naive,' Thomas continued. 'After six years, I just want better for athletes. We deserve it. My goal is to leave this sport better than I found it.'
Thomas's comments, as well as coming hot on the heels of the announcement of Bekh-Romanchuk's doping ban, could also be seen as a not-so-subtle dig at Dennis Mitchell, the coach of her sprint rivals Sha'Carri Richardson and Twanisha Terry.
As an athlete, Mitchell finished fourth in the 100m final at the 1988 Seoul Olympics, dubbed 'the dirtiest race in history, before trying to explain away an excess testosterone finding in 1998 by claiming the night before the test he'd drunk five beers and had sex with his fiancee four times, stating that "it was her birthday, the lady deserved a treat". He served a two-year ban.
Later, when under oath in 2008 during the BALCO investigation, Mitchell testified that he'd received human growth hormone (HGH) injections from his coach, Trevor Graham, and that when he was an adviser to Marion Jones in 1997, they had sought Graham's counsel about performance-enhancing-drug use.
Then, in 2017, two-time doping suspendee Justin Gatlin sacked Mitchell as his coach after he was recorded allegedly offering to supply performance-enhancing drugs to undercover reporters.
Whether or not Thomas's comments were a deliberate nod to Mitchell, her proposed plan would rule him out of coaching in a bid to clean up the sport.
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