More than 12 years after the 2012 London Olympics, United States 1,500-meter runner Shannon Rowbury is set to get a bronze medal because of yet another doping case in a notoriously dirty race.
Russian athlete Tatyana Tomashova, a two-time world champion, was banned for 10 years on Tuesday by a Court of Arbitration for Sport judge. The lengthy ban was imposed because it was her second offense as she previously served a two-year ban in a case that removed her from the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
The court said Tomashova tested positive for anabolic steroids in re-analysis in 2021 of samples she gave in June and July 2012, weeks ahead of the Olympics in London.
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The Russian also was sanctioned with “disqualification of all competitive results” from June 21, 2012 into January 2015 — a period including the London Games.
Tomashova placed fourth on the day in London — and Rowbury was sixth — in a race where the original gold and silver medalists from Turkey, Asli Cakir Alptekin and Gamze Bulut, have long since been disqualified and banned for doping.
Though Rowbury had five racers ahead of her at the finish line in London, she now stands to be upgraded to third in the final standings.
The International Olympic Committee has final approval to reallocate medals that were awarded at the time. Medal presentation ceremonies can be held at a world championships or a future Olympics. The next Summer Games is in 2028 in Los Angeles.
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Rowbury is now aged 39 and retired from racing, and worked as a broadcaster at the Paris Olympics analyzing track races for NBC.
Two runners who placed behind Rowbury in London, from Russia and Belarus, also were later disqualified for doping.
The disqualifications for Alptekin and Gamze lifted Maryam Yusuf Jamal, an Ethiopian-born Bahraini, to be Olympic champion and Tomashova’s disqualification should now raise Abeba Aregawi, an Ethiopia-born Swede, into the silver medal position.
Rowbury is a three-time Olympian who placed fourth in the 1,500 at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics and seventh in 2008 in Beijing. She took bronze at the 2009 world championships in Berlin.
CAS said it acted as the first tribunal in the Tomashova case as a replacement for the Russian track and field federation, which is suspended by the World Athletics governing body.
Tomashova, now aged 49, took silver in the 1,500 at the 2004 Athens Olympics and won back-to-back titles at the world championships in 2003 and 2004.
Her reputation already was damaged by her involvement in a Russian conspiracy to avoid detection of track athletes' doping by switching urine samples. She was provisionally suspended ahead of the Beijing Olympics and later banned for two years.