Walker Loughnane to be crowned World Champion - five years later
FOUR-time Olympian, Galway’s Olive Loughnane looks set to become a World champion following the revelation this week that the Russian she finished second to in the women’s 20km walk at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin has been disqualified for doping.
A thrilled Loughnane has welcomed the news and expressed her delight that drug cheats like Russian Olga Kaniskina were now being “hunted down” in the sport. It has been revealed that of the 17 gold medals won by Russian walkers at the Olympics and Worlds in the last decade, 16 were captured by athletes banned for doping at some stage of their careers.
“It’s ridiculous,” exclaims the mother-of-two of that startling statistic. “Sure, it never made sense. You had this small little area and you had so many winning medals coming out of there. You could be really critical but the rest of us were not stupid either. It wasn’t that we were doing things wrong.
“Look, we always kind of knew. I was disillusioned after London because I felt it was getting away from the WADA, the World Anti Doping Agency. I was obviously privileged to have a medal but I didn’t think anyone else would get that chance because the Russians were dominating so much. It had come to the point where you couldn’t compete with them.”
However, she believes by outing the drug cheats, it will make it possible for clean athletes now to compete for medals and she hopes the news would be a source of encouragement to those honourable competitors working and training hard to reach the summit.
“In fairness, when I was competing, I always went with the attitude that, look, I have no control over what they do. I can only control what I can do. So, I always fought for every single place and it didn’t matter if it was 17th instead of 18th. That is what I did. That kind of stood to me because if I hadn’t fought so hard I might not be going from silver to gold.
“So, yeah, it is a positive development and for me, personally, obviously it is great. I was in the best case scenario going from silver to gold. I am not sure though I would be as charitable towards them if I was going from fourth to third and if I hadn’t stood on the podium.”