Athletics: World's fastest man Christian Coleman exposed by receipts before Tokyo Olympics ban

Christian Coleman was finally caught after being exposed by a number of shopping receipts. Photo / Getty/Photosport

Not even the world's fastest man is that fast.

Christian Coleman has been banned from athletics competition for two years – ruling him out of the Tokyo Olympics where he was favoured to win the 100m sprint – after a doping tribunal deemed it was "impossible" for him to have completed a trip from a fast food restaurant to his home and back to a shopping centre in under half an hour.

Coleman, who had escaped a ban for failing to make himself available to drug testers on three occasions last year on a technicality, was finally caught after being exposed by a number of shopping receipts.

The 24-year-old American had claimed he was out doing Christmas shopping on December 9, 2019, when testers arrived at his house in Lexington, Kentucky, but that he'd returned home during the 60-minute allotment for the test.

Coleman claimed he watched the kick-off of a football game at 8.15pm before heading back out and that the tester must have knocked off early and missed him.

But his defence was emphatically rejected after the tribunal was shown a series of receipts which tracked Coleman's shopping trip.

"Shopping receipts show that the athlete was shopping at least from 7.13pm, also purchased a chipotle at 7.53pm and finally purchased 16 items from a Walmart Super Centre at 8.22pm," the tribunal said. "The athlete's evidence was that he returned home briefly some time between 8 and 8.10pm, ate his chipotle while watching the kick-off and then went out again. We do not accept the athlete's evidence.

"It would have been simply impossible for him to purchase a chipotle at 7:53pm (the store being five to nine minutes to his residence), drive home, park the car, go into his residence, eat the chipotle, then watch the kick-off of the football game which only started at 8:15pm, and thereafter go out again in his car, drive to the store and pick up 16 items at the Walmart Supercentre so as to be able to pay for them by 8:22pm."

Athletes fall foul of doping rules if they record three whereabouts failures within a 12-month window.

Coleman could not be found by officials on June 6, 2018, January 16, 2019 and April 26, 2019 but successfully argued ahead of last year's world championships in Doha the June 6 failure should be back dated to the start of the quarter (April 1) making it more than 12 months before the third breach.

But the missed test on December 9, 2019, added to the two failures in January and April, has seen Coleman suspended until May, 2022. His manager said he will appeal his ban in the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Coleman, who is also the 60m world record holder, only ran in the 4x100m relay heats in his first Olympic appearance in Rio de Janeiro four years ago.

But he won the men's 100 metres in Doha in a world-leading time for the season of 9.76 seconds. It made him the sixth fastest man of all-time.

The Times of London's Rick Broadbent lamented the verdict as the end of the men's 100m as a sporting event worth celebrating.

"It used to be the high point of any Olympic Games. Now it is a grubby sideshow, a sham ruled by the shameless," Broadbent wrote.
"The 100m has shown that it cannot live without Usain Bolt. His brilliance as a teenager meant it was possible to trust his feats. But do we care about Coleman, now banned for two years for missing drug tests? Or Justin Gatlin, the man who took Bolt's world title in 2017 on the back of two drug bans?

"The facts: of the nine fastest men in history only Bolt has never served a doping ban or, in the case of Maurice Greene, been accused while denying any wrongdoing. Of the top 50 times, only Bolt's 15 are unblemished.

"Bolt could make you believe, or at least want to believe, again. Now that era is over and watchers have been worn down by the tradition of righteous lying."