She finished fourth behind a notorious drug cheat. Now she finally has her Sydney bronze

Paris: Finally, Beverly McDonald is an Olympic bronze medallist.

At 54, she still looks fit enough to run around the track again. She’s neither bitter nor angry, she’s just grateful. She even found a positive after all those years of anguish and obfuscation. Her 16-year-old son, Justin, was actually there to see it.

After 24 years, Beverly McDonald finally has her Sydney Olympics bronze medal around her neck. Credit: Eddie Jim

McDonald again donned the Jamaican tracksuit to take the podium, of sorts, under the Eiffel Tower on Friday, to be reallocated a bronze medal for the women’s 200m run in Sydney’s Olympic Stadium on September 28, 2000.

“I guess it’s a bittersweet moment in a way, but once I was out there, it really sunk in,” she said. “I was actually nervous.

“I mean, I thought it was never going to happen. It’s been a long time … 24 years. They said they sent my medal in the post to Jamaica, apparently years ago, and I guess they misplaced it. But my husband [former sprinter Raymond Stewart] is the one that has kept fighting for it, and the IOC finally has delivered it.”

McDonald was one of 10 Olympians who were presented with so-called “reallocated” medals during the ceremony at Champion’s Park, at the Trocadero venue in Paris. They had all waited years to receive their due recognition, many of them as a result of Russia’s years-long doping regime.

Against the backdrop of the Eiffel Tower, one by one, the athletes who competed at the Games in Sydney, Beijing 2008 and London 2012 walked down a stage as highlight videos of their Olympic performances played on screen.

McDonald’s elevation was a consequence of disgraced sprinter Marion Jones’ disqualification because of her admitted and proven doping. The American won five medals at those Games, three of them gold. They came in the 100, 200, and 4×400 metres relay, while she earned bronze medals in the long jump and 4×100 relay.

The International Olympic Committee disqualified Jones’ Sydney 2000 results in 2007, and she was jailed the following year, not for doping, but for lying about her doping to US federal prosecutors.

Though she never tested positive in any drug test, she was hounded by rumours of doping after Sydney. They were exacerbated by her marriage to two athletes (C. J. Hunter and Tim Montgomery) who had both tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs. But 17 years later, McDonald had her day in the sun. Bahamas sprinter Pauline Davis-Thompson was awarded her gold 10 years ago.

Marion Jones was stripped of her 200m gold medal from the Sydney Olympics for doping.Credit: AP

Australians Melinda Gainsford-Taylor and Cathy Freeman finished fifth and sixth in that race, and McDonald finished fourth in a time of 22.350 secs – 0.08 of a second behind the winner. She has not been back to Sydney since but says she has many happy memories, also winning silver in the 4x100m.

“It’s a different moment today,” McDonald, who lives in Fort Worth, Texas, says. “Because that night you’re gonna be with the top three athletes, you know, silver, gold medal. But now you’re just, you know, by yourself, getting the medal. It’s totally different, but it’s still great … but these medals aren’t as big as they are nowadays.”

American high jumper Erik Kynard joined with Canadian Derek Drouin to be awarded gold and silver medals from the London 2012 Olympics. Both were upgraded after Russia’s Ivan Ukhov was stripped of the gold for a doping violation.

Speaking after his ceremony Kynard, who is now a Team USA high-performance coach, said he was glad athletes who respected the rules of sport were now getting a proper ceremony. He said he’d been a “fly on the wall” when American shot-putter Adam Nelson received his retrospective 2004 Olympic gold medal in an airport food court.

American Erik Kynard and Derek Drouin were originally awarded silver and bronze at the 2012 London Olympics, but were both upgraded after Russia’s Ivan Ukhov was stripped of the gold for a doping violation.Credit: Eddie Jim

Emma Terho, the chair of the IOC Athletes’ Commission, said in a news release that the ceremonies “result from the athletes’ voices being taken into account in decision-making” and give competitors whose rivals were later disqualified a chance to have their Olympic moments in front of family, friends and crowds.

Kynard said his experience in sport motivated him to try to ensure that other athletes don’t experience the same things he did.

“Athletics is an occupation; it’s not an identity,” he said. “And it’s important to find either the silver or gold lining in who you are and not focus so much on what it is that you do because the world gets it wrong.”

Drouin said he didn’t have any negative feelings towards Ukhov, who he said was part of a Russian doping regime that was “much more widespread than just any one individual athlete”.

“I don’t think really any individual athlete in this scenario can really be, or should really be, held accountable in the way that maybe other doping scandals have been,” he said.

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