Clean athletes wait for prize cash

MOSCOW • Seven years after the race of her life at the world track and field championships, Olive Loughnane is still waiting for her prize money.

That’s because the first woman across the finish line in the 20-kilometre walk in Berlin in 2009 wasn’t the Irish athlete. It was Russia’s Olga Kaniskina, who was later banned for doping but hasn’t returned the gold medal or the $30,000 in cash owed to Loughnane.

“I’ve three young children,” Loughnane said. “They will be going to college. It’s not an insignificant amount. I didn’t earn anywhere near the amount of money as an athlete that would allow me to retire.”

Athletes who are beaten by doped competitors aren’t only robbed of a moment on the top step of the podium as their national anthem plays, they can also be deprived of large sums of money. In the cases of four Russian and Belarusian dopers who have not paid back prize money from events where they were later disqualified, The Associated Press has found as much as $410,000 may be owed to dozens of athletes, with some debts going back more than a decade.

The problem is expected to intensify with the increase in retesting of medal winners’ samples years after the competition. About 100 athletes from various sports have had their results from the 2008 and 2012 Olympics annulled following new tests with improved techniques.

While the Olympics do not award prize money, doping disqualifications usually trigger backdated bans, wiping out years of results and earnings from past world championships and other events.

In track and field, the problem is particularly serious because the sport’s world governing body, the IAAF, insists it can only redistribute prize money if the athlete banned for doping pays it back first. However, the IAAF’s main weapon to compel dopers to pay back the money is an extension of their bans, which isn’t effective if the athletes plan to retire or have been banned for life.

The IAAF would not confirm how many doped athletes owe prize money or how much is owed in total, or how it tries to recover the cash. However, it said the issue was on the agenda as part of reform talks set for the IAAF congress this week in Monaco.