Ando’s Shout: Olympic legend Raelene Boyle opens up to Jon Anderson on why she holds little hope the IOC will right past wrongs

With Jeff Fenech retrospectively awarded victory over Azumah Nelson, track great Raelene Boyle holds little hope the IOC will make her the four-time gold medallist she deserves to be.

Raelene Boyle should be a four-time Olympic gold medallist.

The WBC’s decision this week to retrospectively award Jeff Fenech his 1990 fight over Azumah Nelson raises other sporting examples of highway robberies.

Sadly the Olympics have been a breeding ground for cheating, beginning at the 1972 Munich games when Eastern Block countries started going the needle.

No athlete suffered more than Australia’s sprint queen Raelene Boyle, who should be known as four-time Olympic gold medallist.

Raelene Boyle should be a four-time Olympic gold medallist.

JA: Has news reached the Sunshine Coast (Buderim) about the Fenech decision?

RB: It hasn’t but I’m very, very glad to hear it.

JA: Are you hopeful the IOC (International Olympic Committee) will reverse your results when you were beaten by proven drug cheats?

RB: No, unless they grow some balls, which is unlikely given their history. And it isn’t only me as there were so many others.

JA: Despite the unfairness, you’ve never struck me as bitter.

RB: I’m sad rather than bitter because the athletes didn’t have a say. I think that’s one of the reasons why Renate Stecher (who beat Boyle twice for gold) hasn’t gone to the Stasi files because she doesn’t want to know. I’m far more bitter at the IOC for not addressing it.

JA: Did you mix with Stecher and the other East Germans at all?

RB: No, they were herded into groups like animals straight after their races.

JA: Does being introduced as “Raelene Boyle, four-time Olympic silver medallist” frustrate you?

Jeff Fenech and Azumah Nelson in Las Vegas in 1991. Picture: Supplied

RB: No, because I’m confident enough to know I was a good athlete and in the best three or four in the world when I competed. It’s just my timing wasn’t great because it was all about pride of the nation stuff for the East Germans.

JA: If you can’t beat them, why not join them?

RB: Because cheating is not something that crosses my path in life. Even if you have to tell someone bad news, you do it because not telling them is cheating.

JA: When you think of clean athletes, who do you think of?

RB: My Australian heroes like Marjie Jackson, Betty Cuthbert, Herb Elliott and Maureen Caird. I love the sport of track and field but I find it really hard to watch now, thinking “is he a cheat, is she a cheat?”

JA: So Usain Bolt?

RB: I truly hope he was clean because he’s been such a great example to people. But the Jamaicans have been out of control, or is it because they have these super duper fast-twitch fibres as I recently read somewhere?