Drug cheats robbed Aussie long jumper of Olympic gold ... and now she wants her medal
AN Australian who finished behind three Russian drug cheats at the Athens Olympics has launched a bid to be awarded a gold medal, 13 years on.
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EXCLUSIVE
AN Australian who finished behind three Russian drug cheats at the Athens Olympics has launched a bid to be awarded a gold medal, 13 years on.
Bronwyn Thompson, along with Great Britain’s Jade Johnson and India’s Anju Bobby-George, are all calling on their national federations and the IAAF to launch an immediate investigation into the long jump medals from the 2004 Athens Olympics.
The 39-year-old Queensland physiotherapist finished fourth in Athens behind three Russian athletes who all tested positive for performance enhancing drug offences in the four-year period after the Games.
Athletics Australia has a board meeting this week and this is where Thompson’s former coach Gary Bourne, a long-term member of the Australian Olympic Team, is hoping to kickstart the investigation.
Despite the samples from the Athens Games being destroyed, Bourne is hoping the Russian athletes can be outed in the same way as Marion Jones and Lance Armstrong, who both never returned a positive drug test at an Olympics but were retrospectively stripped of their medals.
“We strongly believe that a massive injustice occurred in 2004 with failure of the IOC Testing laboratory in Greece to identify positive test results for these Russian medallists,” he said.
“To our dismay it was continued in 2012 with the failure of the IOC to re-test these samples.
“We believe the IOC has been complicit in this matter and must be called to account for their failure to act to protect clean athletes.”
In recent years, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has stripped medals from drug cheats and reallocated them.
Australian walker Jared Tallent was elevated to gold in March last year when Russian Sergey Kirdyapkin was stripped of his 2012 Olympic gold medal after being caught up in the slew of positive drug tests from Russian athletes.
In addition to the IOC having the authority to strip medals, so can the international governing body of each Olympic sport — in Thompson’s case, the IAAF.
Thompson, and the fifth and sixth placegetters Johnson and Bobby-George, are all campaigning for support from their national bodies before approaching the IAAF and IOC.
“We think joint representation from the three countries will optimise our chances for a favourable outcome,” Thompson said.
“As a realist, I understand we may not change the outcome but we have to try.”
India’s Bobby-George has gone further and initiated legal action against the International Olympic Committee and International Association of Athletics Federations.
Thompson, a mother-of-four, continued:”You can’t ever give someone back the moment on top of the podium once you’ve stolen it from them.”
“I have a great life after athletics ... but would I love to be awarded the gold medal after finishing behind three athletes who have all been shown up as drug cheats, of course.”
But Thompson will have to be patient for her Olympic dream to eventuate.
Concerted legal action will be required to overcome the usual eight-year period of redistribution of medals.
However, witness reports and other documentation, sourced through lengthy investigations, saw both Marion Jones and Lance Armstrong stripped of their respective medals from the 2000 Games in Sydney.
Thompson added: “With urine samples from Athens being destroyed in 2012 without being retested — the opportunity to support or refute the use of banned substances in the Russians at the 2004 Games was lost.”
“At this stage, I am hoping Athletics Australia will support the three of us in our legal action to help build a strategy and gather evidence to build our case.”
Originally published as Drug cheats robbed Aussie long jumper of Olympic gold ... and now she wants her medal
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