Kaliese Spencer upgraded to 2012 Olympic bronze medal
Jamaica’s Kaliese Spencer is set to receive an Olympic bronze medal from the 2012 edition of the Games in London, as the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) officially disqualified gold medal winner Natalya Antyukh of Russia.
Reports from NBC Sports are that on October 24, the Russian Anti-Doping Agency announced that Antyukh’s results from July 2012 through June 2013, a stretch that includes the London Games, were stripped due to evidence of doping from historical data.
Antyukh, a 41-year-old, who last competed in 2016, was already serving a four-year doping ban.
This means that Olympic 400m hurdles runner-up Lashinda Demus of the United States, who originally finished seven hundredths of a second behind Antyukh, is now listed as gold medalist on her World Athletics page.
Zuzana Hejnová of the Czech Republic was moved from third to second and Spencer from fourth to third.
Meanwhile, the International Olympic Committee has not changed its results to reallocate medals, but can still do so.
The AIU, which handles doping cases in track and field, said it notified the IOC last Friday of World Athletics’ results change.