Great Britain’s 4x100m relay team has been stripped of its Olympic silver medal in the men’s 4x100m relay that they won in Tokyo last August after the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) upheld Chijindu Ujah’s anti-doping violation on Friday.
Ujah has been provisionally suspended since Ostarine and S-23 — both substances prohibited by World Anti-doping Agency (WADA) — were detected in his sample in Tokyo.
The CAS had the hearing in November but only revealed on Friday. It found that the 27-year-old sprinter did have two banned substances in a urine sample, ostarine and S-23, which are known as selective androgen receptor modulators that mimic testosterone in the body.
Ujah had blamed his failed test on a contaminated supplement. However under the strict liability rules of the World Anti-Doping Agency that is no defence.
The British men’s quartet of Ujah, Zharnel Hughes, Richard Kilty and Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake missed out on the 4x100m title by just a hundredth of a second in Tokyo, as the anchor-leg runner Mitchell-Blake was overhauled on the line by Italy’s Filippo Tortu.
Canada will now be upgraded to silver with China moving into the bronze medal position. “I accept the decision issued by the Court of Arbitration for Sport today with sadness,” Ujah said in a statement issued by UK Athletics.
“I would like to make it clear that I unknowingly consumed a contaminated supplement and this was the reason why an anti-doping rule violation occurred at the Tokyo Olympic Games. “I would like to apologise to my teammates, their families and support teams for the impact which this has had on them. I’m sorry that this situation has cost my teammates the medals they worked so hard and so long for, and which they richly deserved. That is something I will regret for the rest of my life.”
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