BRITAIN’S relay runners have finally received world championship gold medals…28 YEARS after the race took place.

Roger Black, Iwan Thomas, Jamie Baulch, Mark Richardson and reserve Mark Hylton finished second in the men’s 4×400 metres relay final behind the United States at the 1997 Worlds in Athens.

The quartet ran a time of 2:56.65 while American sprinters Jerome Young, Antonio Pettigrew, Chris Jones and Tyree Washington came home first in 2:56.47 in the Greek capital.

Yet a retrospective anti-doping violation by Pettigrew – in 2008 he was banned for two years after admitting he used prohibited substances – meant the Yanks were belatedly booted out of the event.

This resulted in the Brits being upgraded to the gold medal position but it has taken almost three decades before they got their hands on the gongs.

A special medal ceremony led by World Athletics President Seb Coe took place at the London Stadium on Saturday at 1.30pm on a wet afternoon in Stratford.

And the British national anthem was also played in front of the sell-out crowd.

UK Athletics say the presentation “offers a long-awaited opportunity to celebrate a landmark moment in British athletics and to honour a team who exemplified fairness, resilience and excellence on the global stage”.

Pettigrew, who was born in Georgia, was caught up in the BALCO doping scandal and admitted during the trial of former coach Trevor Graham that he had doped.

As a result, the US Anti-Doping Agency annulled all of Pettigrew’s competitive results after January 1997.

He also voluntarily surrendered his 2000 Sydney Olympics 4×400 metres relay gold medal and his 1997 and 1999 world championship relay golds.

In August 2010, Pettigrew was found dead in the backseat of his locked car in North Carolina. He was 42 years old.

An autopsy report said the cause of death was diphenhydramine toxicity – it was ruled that he had committed suicide by overdosing on a drug common to sleeping pills.

One of the reasons it has taken so long to happen is that the five guys had not managed to coordinate diaries for an event taking place in the UK after it was all confirmed in 2021.

Yet there is a bittersweet feeling among the contingent given that Pettigrew felt compelled to take his own life when his drugs shame went public.

Welsh star Baulch, 52, said: “I’ve said this to a few people now. If there was an option of giving this gold medal to him, I’d rather him have the gold medal than him taking his life.

“His life is far more important to me than me having this gold medal.”

Former European 400 metres champion Thomas, 51, said: “On the one hand it’s a real shame it’s taken this long.

“On a personal level, it’s really beautiful today. My son Teddy, who is six, is here today. I didn’t have any children back then.

“My mum and dad are pretty elderly now. They’re up in the box. For them to be able to see the moment I should have had with the boys 28 years ago, but in front of a British crowd, it felt really special.”