Rachael Thom­spon-King

T&T men's sprint re­lay team, which won bronze in the 2012 Lon­don Olympics, may be up­grad­ed again af­ter the en­tire US re­lay team was stripped of its sil­ver medal yes­ter­day as a re­sult of Tyson Gay's dop­ing case, two of­fi­cials with knowl­edge of the de­ci­sion as re­port­ed by the As­so­ci­at­ed Press. The of­fi­cials spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty be­cause the de­ci­sion has not yet been an­nounced.

The In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee no­ti­fied the US Olympic Com­mit­tee by let­ter that the 4x100 re­lay team has been dis­qual­i­fied and all the medals with­drawn, the of­fi­cials said. The let­ter asks the USOC to col­lect the medals and re­turn them to the IOC.

Gay re­turned his own medal last year af­ter ac­cept­ing a one-year dop­ing sus­pen­sion and the loss of re­sults go­ing back to Ju­ly 2012, but the sta­tus of the US sec­ond-place fin­ish in Lon­don and the medals of Gay's re­lay team­mates had re­mained in lim­bo un­til now.

Pres­i­dent of T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) Bri­an Lewis yes­ter­day said that he has re­ceived no of­fi­cial con­fir­ma­tion on the de­vel­op­ment.

"I haven't seen a re­port from the In­ter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee (IOC) but we are look­ing for­ward to the of­fi­cial con­fir­ma­tion. We have to wait on the IOC to do ad­di­tion­al de­lib­er­a­tion, to con­firm whether or not the sil­ver medal will be re­al­lo­cat­ed," said Lewis.

Un­der in­ter­na­tion­al rules, an en­tire team can be dis­qual­i­fied and stripped of medals be­cause of dop­ing by one mem­ber.

Gay was a mem­ber of the Amer­i­can team that fin­ished sec­ond in Lon­don be­hind a Ja­maican team an­chored by Us­ain Bolt. The Amer­i­cans set a na­tion­al record in the fi­nal with a time of 37.04 sec­onds.

The oth­er US team mem­bers los­ing medals are Trell Kim­mons, Justin Gatlin, Ryan Bai­ley, Jef­fery Demps and Darvis Pat­ton. Kim­mons, Gatlin and Bai­ley ran in the fi­nal with Gay.

It will be a sec­ond up­grade for lo­cal quar­tet of Ke­ston Bled­man, Marc Burns, Em­manuel Cal­len­der and Richard Thomp­son, who some three years ago moved from fourth to third af­ter the Cana­di­an team of Justyn Warn­er, Gavin Smellie, Oluseyi Smith and Jared Con­naughton, run­ning the third leg and on the fi­nal turn, had tak­en one step on the lane line, earn­ing the team an au­to­mat­ic dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion.

Lewis was adamant about the TTOC join­ing with the glob­al an­ti-dop­ing com­mu­ni­ty, with a clear fo­cus on pro­tect­ing the clean ath­lete.

"TTOC has been rigourous in pro­tect­ing the rights of the clean ath­lete and this de­vel­op­ment on­ly high­lights the need to do so."

Gatlin, who is in Qatar for the open­ing Di­a­mond League meet of the sea­son to­mor­row, told AP that he was not aware of the de­ci­sion and had no com­ment. Gatlin, who won the 100-me­ter gold medal at the 2004 Athens Games, served a four-year dop­ing ban from 2006.

Gay test­ed pos­i­tive for steroids at the US cham­pi­onships in 2013. He re­ceived a re­duced sus­pen­sion–rather than a two-year ban– be­cause he co­op­er­at­ed with the US An­ti-Dop­ing Agency's in­ves­ti­ga­tion that led to an eight-year ban for his for­mer coach, Jon Drum­mond.

Gay's re­sults were an­nulled go­ing back to Ju­ly 15, 2012, the date when he first used a prod­uct con­tain­ing a banned sub­stance.

If the Lon­don medals are re­al­lo­cat­ed, the sil­ver will go to T&T, who fin­ished third in 38.12 sec­onds. The bronze would go to the French team which placed fourth in 38.16 sec­onds.

"Our ath­letes were de­nied the op­por­tu­ni­ty or more­so the glo­ry to stand on the podi­um and re­ceive the sil­ver medal. This lat­est de­vel­op­ment strength­ens the un­wa­ver­ing ef­fort of the TTOC in pro­tect­ing the rights of the clean ath­lete," said Lewis.

The rules of track and field's world gov­ern­ing body, the In­ter­na­tion­al As­so­ci­a­tion of Ath­let­ics Fed­er­a­tions, man­dat­ed that the en­tire US team be dis­qual­i­fied, but the fi­nal de­ci­sion was up to the IOC.

Drum­mond was the coach of the US re­lay team in Lon­don and placed Gay on the team. Ac­cord­ing to the US­A­DA de­ci­sion in Drum­mond's case, the ath­lete took a banned sub­stance in Ju­ly 2012 with the coach's knowl­edge.

The IOC has pre­vi­ous­ly stripped US re­lay teams of medals retroac­tive­ly for dop­ing, in­clud­ing three teams from the 2000 Syd­ney Olympics.

The US was stripped of gold in the women's 4x400 and bronze in the 4x100 fol­low­ing Mar­i­on Jones' ad­mis­sion of dop­ing. Jones re­turned her medals, but her team­mates ap­pealed to the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sport to keep theirs and won their case in 2010. The court said IAAF rules at the time did not al­low en­tire teams to be dis­qual­i­fied be­cause of dop­ing by one ath­lete.

The IOC al­so stripped the US men's 4x400 re­lay of their Syd­ney gold af­ter a dop­ing ad­mis­sion by An­to­nio Pet­ti­grew.

In 2012, Amer­i­can run­ner Crys­tal Cox was stripped of her gold medal from the 4x400 re­lay at the 2004 Athens Olympics af­ter ad­mit­ting to dop­ing. The IOC did not dis­qual­i­fy the rest of the team be­cause it was un­clear which rules were in ef­fect at the time.