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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial | |
ARTICLE VIEW: | |
Alysia Montaño is set to be upgraded to a bronze medal after her | |
rivals doped. That still feels like a ‘stab in the gut’ | |
By George Ramsay, CNN | |
Updated: | |
9:33 AM EDT, Tue May 14, 2024 | |
Source: CNN | |
A step onto the podium. A medal draped over your head and a flag raised | |
in your honor. Music. Tears of joy and relief as years of hard work | |
come to fruition. | |
Receiving a first medal is supposed to be a momentous and exhilarating | |
occasion for every athlete but not Alysia Montaño. | |
It was late at night in Cleveland this year when the American athlete | |
was informed that her fourth-place finish at the 2012 Olympics is set | |
to be upgraded to bronze. Alone in a hotel room, thousands of miles | |
from home, her initial emotions were only emptiness and loss. | |
This should have come 12 years earlier, in a packed stadium with her | |
family sitting proudly in the stands. Instead, all Montaño could do | |
was lie down and stare vacantly at the ceiling as the hours drifted� | |
by. | |
“A stab in the gut, in the heart, really,” is how she describes her | |
supposed moment of triumph. “I kind of felt a sinking feeling, to be | |
honest.” | |
Montaño initially placed fifth in the women’s 800-meter final in | |
London, about half a second outside the medal positions having led the | |
race bravely through the first lap. | |
In front of her were two Russian athletes – Mariya Savinova, who had | |
streaked away from the rest of the field on the final straight, and | |
Ekaterina Guliyev (then known as Ekaterina Poistogova), who narrowly | |
edged out Kenya’s Pamela Jelimo for bronze. | |
Both Savinova and Guliyev were identified in a 2015 report, | |
commissioned by the , as having benefitted from , though Montaño’s | |
performance at the London Olympics is only just now receiving the | |
recognition it deserves. | |
Savinova was stripped of her gold medal in 2017, while Guliyev is also | |
set to lose her silver, upgraded from bronze, after the Athletics | |
Integrity Unit this month that her results from July 17, 2012 to | |
October 20, 2014 would be disqualified. | |
Guliyev, now competing for Turkey under her husband’s surname, has | |
been given a two-year ban and has until May 13 to appeal the | |
decision. | |
She has previously served another two-year ban for doping violations, | |
voiding her results back to October 2015, and attempted to argue in a | |
tribunal that there was no evidence to bring further charges against | |
her. CNN has contacted the Turkish Athletic Federation for further | |
comment. | |
In the days after learning that she could be awarded a bronze medal, | |
Montaño says that her emotions oscillated from joy to sadness to | |
something akin to grief. | |
Her despair is at its lowest when she thinks of her grandmother, who | |
turned 100 days before the 800-meter final in London and celebrated by | |
watching the race from a hospital bed, never to know that Montaño’s | |
fifth place would later be upgraded. | |
“You can’t ever get that back,” the 38-year-old Montaño | |
explains. “The loss is history lost; the loss is the moment lost; the | |
loss is the people who were there to hug you and cheer for you; the | |
loss is the homecoming parade. These things are very real.” | |
This is not a new situation for Montaño, who was retrospectively | |
awarded bronze medals for her performances at the 2011 and 2013 world | |
championships after Savinova was stripped of gold in both races. | |
While competing, she says that she was suspicious of her Russian | |
rivals, partly after observing a sharp and unprecedented improvement in | |
some athletes’ results and partly from the ease with which they would | |
pass her on the track. | |
“It’s like you’re running against robots,” says Montaño. | |
“When you get beaten by a competitor, you can feel the huff and the | |
puff of the two of you kind of going at it, or the three of you going | |
at it. | |
“Sticking your neck out there for just a second of time, or a | |
millisecond of time, and it just isn’t the same way. Anybody can go | |
and watch those videos [of past races] and see: this is wild.” | |
In 2019, six and eight years after winning her two world championship | |
medals, Montaño and her family – her husband, parents and children | |
– were invited to Doha in Qatar for a staging of the medal ceremonies | |
she never had. | |
But the crowd in the stadium was scant and the accompanying fireworks | |
display, she thought, was underwhelming, making her feel “even more | |
empty.” | |
Now, Montaño hopes to receive her Olympic medal at the 2028 Games in | |
Los Angeles, with family, friends, supporters and sponsors there to see | |
the moment – unlike American shot putter Adam Nelson, who was , | |
nine years later than intended due to a rival’s doping violation. | |
She also wants to recoup some of the financial losses she incurred by | |
being denied an Olympic medal, and one of her current sponsors, , has | |
already agreed to pay Montaño an undisclosed financial bonus for | |
finishing third in 2012, even though she partnered with the company | |
after the London Olympics. | |
Based on the contracts she had at the time, Montaño estimates that she | |
has missed out on payments amounting to “well over seven figures.” | |
However, the true sum is impossible to quantify; winning a medal at a | |
major championship, she explains, increases an athlete’s potential | |
earnings when it comes to negotiating appearance fees or future | |
contracts. | |
“Even now, I walk into a conversation and folks run through your | |
accolades and you know the difference between being a medalist and not | |
being one is a huge pay cut,” says Montaño. | |
“It’s like anybody who walks into a job interview and their | |
experience gets them a difference with what their compensation is going | |
to be. Coming off [the 2011 world championships] and being a bronze | |
medalist, my bargaining power would have been through the roof,” she | |
added. | |
She believes that some athletes competing at this year’s Paris | |
Olympics will end up suffering a similar fate to her – potentially | |
being robbed of their moment on the podium and in the spotlight – | |
and wants to see harsher punishments introduced for those found guilty | |
of doping offenses. | |
“We need to have a much more difficult pathway for athletes who use | |
performance-enhancing drugs to re-enter the sport,” says Montaño. | |
“We also have to have much heavier repercussions, I think, from a | |
financial aspect for athletes who choose to dope … There needs to be | |
heavy fines, especially if you want to re-enter the sport. And right | |
now, there’s not enough repercussion.” | |
CNN has contacted US Olympic and Paralympic Committee about athletes | |
being compensated if they are awarded a medal retrospectively. | |
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) operates a , enabling | |
athletes to be recognized at a ceremony of their choosing once the | |
reallocation has been approved. | |
Missing out on medals and potential earnings has contributed towards | |
what Montaño describes as a sense of “isolation” from the sport of | |
track and field during a career beset with challenges. | |
In 2019, she told the New York Times that Nike said it would pause her | |
contract and stop paying her if she wanted to have a baby, so that | |
female athletes wouldn’t be “adversely impacted financially for | |
pregnancy” for 18 months, which was six months more than the previous | |
policy. | |
“I definitely have felt a lot of trauma around the track and | |
competing in the sport,” says Montaño, having last competed in an | |
elite race in 2017. | |
But her love for running remains undiminished. She still enjoys heading | |
out on the roads and trails and strongly believes that the sport | |
provides a powerful, positive influence, especially when it comes to | |
her own struggles and frustrations. | |
“I feel like I leave all of that stuff behind once I lace up and I | |
get going,” says Montaño. “Once my adrenaline starts rushing and | |
my blood starts coursing through my body and my heart starts pumping, | |
my head gains clarity.” | |
As for the prospect of being awarded an Olympic medal, 2028 will be a | |
full 16 years after she raced in London and crossed the line in a state | |
of exhaustion – an extraordinary and often painful expanse of time. | |
For Montaño, the moment should at least offer some sort of closure. | |
“I’m hopeful that it’ll feel like a chapter on which we can turn | |
a page,” she says, “instead of being stuck on the same sentence.” | |
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