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Usain Bolt

London — Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt says Russian athletes being banned from the Rio de Janeiro Olympics will “scare a lot of people” thinking about doping.

A Court of Arbitration for Sport ruling yesterday confirmed an IAAF ban on Russian track and field athletes from competing at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics.

Bolt, the winner of six Olympic gold medals, says “this will scare a lot of people, send a strong message.”

The IOC is also mulling whether to follow the IAAF’s decision and ban the entire Russia team from Rio over allegations of state-sponsored doping.
Bolt says recent actions by authorities show that “if you cheat or if you go against the rules” then “serious action” will be taken.

The world’s fastest man was speaking in London ahead of a Diamond League meet where he will compete in the 200m today.

Meanwhile, gold medals are the ultimate prize in Olympic sport.

They’re also a misnomer.

There’s no such thing as a “gold” medal, not at these upcoming Rio Olympics — and really, not ever. Second-place finishers get silver medals and oddly enough, so do the winners, albeit theirs are plated in a tiny amount of gold.

That factoid caught even some of those who were put in charge of making the 5 000 or so medals needed for these Rio Games by surprise.

“Our operators and some of our developers had the same question,” said Victor Hugo Berbert, who managed the medal-making process and was part of a team of about 100 people at the Brazilian Mint who were part of the project.

“We can produce medals out of pure gold. But we know how expensive they are. So gold medals… are not exactly pure gold.”

The medals given to champions at these Olympics will weigh just over a pound, so to make them entirely from gold would have cost about $23 500 in material, each.

By taking the silver medals and then plating them in a tiny amount of Brazilian gold, the actual value of the metal inside those metals is about $600.

Not that the athletes will mind.

“The gold medal,” hockey legend Wayne Gretzky famously said at the Salt Lake Olympics    in 2002 when he was executive director of the gold-winning Canadian team, “is everything.”— Sport24.