Give Tyson Gay, America’s fastest man, this much. He’s not running from it.

Gay failed a drug test for an undisclosed banned substance, then stood up and raised his hand. He didn’t blame it on a masseuse who rubbed some mysterious cream on his legs (Justin Gatlin) or drinking five beers and having sex with his wife (Dennis Mitchell) or eating a tainted steak (Alberto Contador) or Jack Daniel’s shots the night before he got popped (Floyd Landis).

Gay confirmed he tested positive and immediately withdrew from the upcoming World Championships in Moscow.

“I don’t have a sabotage story,” said the American record holder for 100 meters and owner of the world’s three fastest times in 2013. “I don’t have any lies. I don’t have anything to say to make this seem like it was a mistake or it was on USADA’s hands, someone playing games. I don’t have any of those stories. I basically put my trust in someone and I was let down. … I will take whatever punishment I get like a man.”

Maybe it was an innocuous oversight. Maybe he’ll elicit sympathy when the full story comes out. Maybe Gay, a spokesman for the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency’s “My victory, I compete clean” campaign, deserves the benefit of the doubt.

Or maybe he doesn’t. Gay is 30, and he is suddenly healthy after a series of debilitating injuries, and he runs the 100 meters, and he runs it really, really fast. That might be enough to convict.

At the 2008 Olympics, I asked Victor Conte, the man behind the BALCO doping scandal, if he would consult his circle of experts and calculate how fast a human being could run 100 meters “clean,” without illicit chemical enhancement. Conte worked with the late Charlie Francis, Ben Johnson’s famed coach and doping advisor, and Remi Korchemny, the sage Ukrainian track guru who was instrumental in transforming BALCO-fueled Kelli White from ho-hum sprinter into double world champion.

Conte got back to me a few days later. Their conclusion:

“9.94 seconds, maybe 9.92,” Conte said. “You’d have to have the perfect conditions, a tailwind, great mechanics ... I would say anything in the 9.8s is suspicious and anything in the 9.7s is highly suspicious.”

The next night, Usain Bolt went 9.69 in the Olympic semifinals in Beijing. A few hours later, he went 9.58 in the final.

Ten men in history have covered track’s most iconic distance in 9.80 seconds or less. Eight have now been linked to doping with Sunday’s revelations about positive tests for Gay and Jamaica’s Asafa Powell.

That leaves two: Bolt and Jamaican teammate Nesta Carter.

That also leaves Bolt in an untenable position, a sort of Lance Armstrong in spikes. Bolt is the undeniable face of his sport, too, the lone Ionic column holding up a crumbling Greek temple, and he is because he’s beating people who, like Lance, we increasingly know have juiced.

The top 20 times in U.S. history in the 100 meters? All by men linked to doping now, and all considerably slower than the 6-foot-5 Jamaican who comes from a rural parish known for yams that locals insist carry medicinal and spiritual powers.


