The battle between USA and China for topping the medals table is so tight that even a bronze was not to be overlooked. On Wednesday, USA added seven medals alone from track and field that took them ahead of China in overall medal-haul if not in gold counts.
So Carmelita Jeter had every reason to feel proud. She came second in 100-metre sprint and added a bronze in 200m, finishing ahead of Veronica Campbell-Brown, the Olympic champions in this event in Athens and Beijing.
She was smiling more so as after finishing third in the 200m, Jeter became the first US woman to win Olympic medals in both sprints at the same Games since Florence Griffith-Joyner in 1988.
Naturally there was no disappointment in her face during the post-race press conference. She was rather beaming until it turned sour for her with a question from a visiting American journalist.
All her smile was gone in a flash when she was asked about her link with her former coach Mark Block, who was banned from athletics for 10 years by the US Anti-Doping Agency for his connections to the Balco doping scandal.
‘I am going to count to 10,’ Jeter reacted angrily. ‘I am up here, I am a woman who has a medal in the 100m and 200m now, and for me to be asked that bothers me.
‘Whatever happened with Mark Block before I came to him, has absolutely nothing to do with me,’ said Jeter, terming her former coach still as a close friend.
Block was suspended last year by an anti-doping arbitration panel after it found he trafficked in drugs supplied by Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative and gave them to his wife, former world 200-metre champion Zhanna Pintusevich.
Pintusevich, who is from Ukraine, was connected to Balco fonder Victor Conte and hit with a two-year doping suspension in 2011.
‘I love that man and his family and his daughter,’ said Jeter of Block, who founded Total Sports Management, the company that represents the 32-year-old athlete.
‘Yes, he was banned but that doesn’t mean he can’t manage or be an agent; that’s why Mark Block comes to things that I do because he cares about me,’ said Jeter.
‘I don’t know how some people are raised, but I was raised to always be friends with someone and have loyalty to people. If he got in trouble for whatever he got in trouble for, that does not mean that I don’t still care about him.’
-With New Age input
