‘It’s very hard not to be angry about it’
Canadian skeleton racers had Olympic experience tainted by Russian dopers
Sarah Reid suddenly isn’t sure what to say if somebody asks how she did at the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
Until Wednesday, she was officially seventh in women’s skeleton in her only Winter Games experience. But the International Olympic Committee handed down lifetime retroactive bans to three Russian sliders who finished ahead of Reid in Sochi and were subsequently found guilty of doping.
“Oh wow, I don’t really know. I guess I would say fourth,” said Reid, now an interior designer in Newmarket, Ont. “But I guess I’d feel the need to explain for some reason. You walk away from it thinking that’s what it was, seventh, but now it’s not.
“I probably will say fourth, but with an asterisk.”
That there are conditions attached to the experience that capped an 11-year career as a high-performance athlete leaves her mighty conflicted.
“It’s really positive that the IOC is trying to clean up sport and set an example and make a level playing field for athletes coming up through the ranks and having dreams of competing in a fair and ethical Games. But it’s also really frustrating and disappointing.”
She’s happy to see these particular drug cheats — Sochi bronze medal winner Elena Nikitina, Maria Orlova and Olga Potylitsyna — dealt with so firmly, but Reid feels cheated.
“To be honest, yeah. It’s very hard not to be angry about it because for me that was my only Olympic experience,” Reid said. “I competed in the sport for 11 years and my last two runs in the sport were my last two runs in the Olympics. So, to work so hard so long for something, to put everything into it and go about it in a way I knew was ethical, and to find out that’s not how everyone approached it, that’s really frustrating. I guess it kind of taints the experience in hindsight.”
Mellisa Hollingsworth was in the field in Sochi, too. Now a real estate agent in central Alberta, Hollingsworth chose the wrong runners on the first of two race days and finished 11th. She moves to eighth, which is insignificant to her. And she is happy to see a step toward justice.
But there are nagging doubts about other races, other podiums missed or shared with those three Russians.
“This is obviously specific to one race at Sochi,” Hollingsworth said. “We won’t know and it is hard to not think about those other World Cups and world championships.”
There were financial bonuses built into some of her sponsorship deals, and they paid thousands of dollars for medals at major races.
“If you go back and look at lots of those different races, I’m sure there are some Russians in the mix. I’m thinking of times when I remember Olga or Elena ahead of me when I was on the podium or maybe they won a medal and I was fourth or fifth.
“There’s a lot of math that I’m probably not going to sit down and do.”
Hollingsworth retired after Sochi, but has paid rapt attention to stories examining Russia’s systemic doping efforts. She watched the documentary Icarus, which laid out the system of urine-swapping at Sochi 2014 in excruciating detail.
Reid, however, distanced herself from the scandal. At least she did until Wednesday.
“Especially because I haven’t slid for the past three years, I feel I almost put my head in the sand a little bit about it. You don’t want to believe that’s what happened. It just puts such a damper on the experience. I feel I’ve kind of had blinders on to that possibility. Now, knowing for a fact what happened, it’s hard to do that.”
Both Reid and Hollingsworth thought of Beckie Scott on Wednesday. The former crosscountry skier from Vegreville, Alta., was upgraded first from bronze to silver, then finally to gold in 2004, as the IOC disqualified two Russians who finished ahead of her in the five-kilometre pursuit at the Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002. Both Olga Danilova and Larisa Lazutina were found guilty of blood doping offences.
Hollingsworth also thought back to Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson’s victory in the 100 metres and subsequent positive test for the steroid stanozolol at the Seoul Olympics in 1988. It left a lasting impression on her.
“You’re sitting in front of the TV and you’re so proud. It was just this crazy amount of pride watching that race. Then all of a sudden the hammer came down, the truth came out, and you were so embarrassed. There was just no way ever that I would subject myself, my family, my character, to ever doing that.”
There’s a lot of math that I’m probably not going to sit down and do.