CANTABRIA-BORN high-jumper Ruth Beitia has been awarded the bronze medal from the London 2012 Olympics nine years after winning it.
Ruth winning her gold in Rio 2016, the first Spanish high-jumper ever to net an Olympic medal
Ruth, 42, who netted the gold at Rio 2016 and then announced her retirement – as she considered she would be 'too old' by Tokyo – came away from London with a fourth-place diploma, with the podium completed by Russia's Svetlana Shkolina.
But a doping inquiry has now led to Shkolina's being stripped of her bronze, which has gone to Ruth.
Also, Ruth has been declared reserve world champion from Moscow 2013 after Shkolina's win was annulled due to doping, and the hitherto silver medallist, the USA's Brigetta Barrett, has been moved up to the championship slot.
These late results mean Ruth is now the only female high-jumper to have won more than one Olympic medal.
Her international results list has now been updated to include the Rio 2016 gold and London 2012 bronze, and the silver in the 2013 world championships.
Furthermore, she has three European championship wins to her name – from 2012, 2014 and 2016 – plus two silvers (2010 and 2016) and two bronzes (2006 and 2014) from the indoor world championships, a gold (2013), a bronze (2007) and four silvers (2005, 2009, 2011 and 2017) in the European indoor championships, a gold in the Under-23 European championships (2001), and a gold in the 2005 Mediterranean Games.
In 2017, before crashing out of the World Athletics Championship final in London, Ruth's being seen comforting her distraught rival who had just been eliminated won her the IAAF Fair Play Award, presented by its chairman, Sebastian Coe.
Svetlana Shkolina is one of 11 Russian Olympians to have been disqualified from London 2012, including silver medallist Natalia Zabolotnaya, along with the rest of the podium, in the women's 75-kilo-and-under weight-lifting, leading to Spain's Lydia Valentín's shooting up from fourth place to gold medallist, an honour that would not reach her for another seven years.
In Lydia's case, she also earned the silver from Peking 2008, her first Olympics which she left with a fifth-place diploma, after gold medallist Lei Cao (China), silver winner Hripsime Khurshudyan (Armenia), bronze medallist Nadezhda Evstyukhina (Russia) and fourth-placed Iryna Kulesha (Belarus) were disqualified for doping.
Iryna was, additionally, among those disqualified in London, losing her bronze medal, along with gold medallist Svetlana Podobedova (Kazakhstan), and leading to Lydia's being declared Olympic champion
The Sporting Arbitrage Tribunal (TAS) has taken Ruth Beitia's nemesis Svetlana Shkolina's wins off her and invalidated all her results from July 16, 2012 to December 31, 2014, which includes the London Olympic women's high-jumping final, as this fell on July 27, 2012.
Shkolina appealed against her lengthy ban from the sport, which the TAS originally set at four years, and her defence has been partially upheld, meaning she will now only be off the circuit for two years and nine months.
It will, however, mean she would miss the Tokyo 2020 Olympics – due to be held this summer, a year late as a consequence of the pandemic – but she would be missing it in any case, since the TAS has prevented Russia as a country from taking part in these and in the Peking Winter Olympics in 2022.
Participants from Russia can still compete and run for medals, but as 'independent athletes', meaning they cannot wear any symbols or signs from their country and will not be representing their nation at all, and if they win, will not have their national anthem played in their honour.
Additionally, other than the UEFA Euro football tournament next year – given that the city of St Petersburg will be hosting three matches in the first phase and one in the quarter-finals, and given that the ban only stretches to world, not continental, competition – Russian government representatives will not be allowed to attend any Olympic or World Championship sporting events in an official capacity, only as 'ordinary' spectators among the general public, unless they are invited expressly by national leaders of the host country, or they are the hosts themselves.
Neither will any Russian sportsperson be allowed to compete on the world stage until after December 16, 2022, representing their country – only in an independent personal capacity.
Russia is not permitted to organise any world championship events on national territory until after this date.
SPAIN'S last-minute win against England in the 2024 UEFA Euros comes on the 60th anniversary of the country's first-ever title in the much-followed competition – and has broken numerous records, too.
A HOLLYWOOD legend joining folk-dancers from Asturias and showing off her fancy footwork in the street is not a scene your average Oviedo resident witnesses during his or her weekly shop. Even though their northern...
