GLORY DENIED
later found guilty of doping offences. Cox, who ran in the heats but not the final, had her medal revoked but the US team did not.
“It kind of ran out of time because it had to be done within a certain time period,” said Mcconnell of the labyrinthine appeals process. “We never got upgraded even though one of the Americans was disqualified for being a drugs cheat. There was a lot of argument around it but it didn’t get dealt with quickly enough by the IAAF [international Association of Athletics Federations] and IOC [International Olympic Committee]. It’s disappointing obviously.
“At the moment I could still get upgrades to World Championships bronze [after GB finished fourth behind the Russians in the 2009 and 2011 4x400m relays] and a European Championship bronze to silver [from 2010]. But we don’t know what’s going to happen with that. There is just so much controversy at the moment surrounding the Russians. I don’t know where it’s going.”
Now 38, Mcconnell retired from the sport in 2014 after just failing in a brave bid to compete in the Glasgow Commonwealth Games less than a year after giving birth to her first son.
The team aspect of relays can make decisions to strip and upgrade more complicated but they do happen, with Usain Bolt famously losing
0 Lee Mcconnell on way to fourth place in the 4 x 400m relay at the Athens Olympic Games in 2004.
LEE MCCONNELL his 2008 Beijing 4x100m relay gold after Jamaica team-mate Nesta Carter was found guilty of doping, and the GB quartet upgraded to bronze after finishing fourth behind the Russians in the men’s 4x400m at the same Olympics.martyn Rooney, Andrew Steele, Robert Tobin and Michael Bingham received their bronze medals in the London Olympic Stadium at the Anniversary Games earlier this month.
Mcconnell was delighted to see that but stressed that such gestures don’t come close to making up for devastation of being cheated out of hardworked-for success.
“It was fantastic seeing the boys get their medal the other week but, even if I was to get something like that, it wouldn’t be the same,” she said. “There is so much lost. You’re losing that moment but also a lot of confidence.
“When you just miss out on medals like that you start to doubt yourself and think ‘I’m not good enough’ but the truth is you are good enough, it’s just that other people have cheated to get ahead of you. That plays on your mind and it dents your confidence, changes how you go about things. You train too hard maybe to overcompensate and pick up injuries.
“There is money lost financially, too, as medals can lead to extra funding and sponsorship. And you can miss out on getting entry to some of the big races on the circuit the following year, which you might not if you were, say, an Olympic medallist.
“Invites to those big races help you plan your season, give you a better chance of peaking at the right time.
“Cheating really needs to be stamped out of our sport. Banning Russia was a big step but I think more needs to be done.” Three matches at this month’s Wimbledon will be investigated for possible match-fixing, the Tennis Integrity Unit has announced.
Alerts were triggered on two matches at the qualifying event at Roehampton and one from the main draw at SW19 after some unusual betting patterns.
The matches will now be reviewed by the TIU in keeping with its match alert policy, along with one from last month’s French Open, though the unit stressed that an alert is not evidence of match-fixing.
Those are four of 53 alerts received by the TIU since April, with three coming on the men’s ATP Tour and one on the women’s WTA Tour. The rest came on the lower level Challenger, Futures and ITF Women’s circuits.
The latest figures show a drop in the number of alerts from the same period last year, where 73 were received in 2016. The first six months of 2017 has seen 83 alerts raised in total, 38 less than last year.
In a statement on its website, the TIU said: “These will be assessed and reviewed in keeping with the TIU match alert policy.”
At the WTA Ladies Championship in Gstaad, Switzerland, Czech Tereza Martincova enjoyed the biggest upset of the tournament – and her career – by beating top seed Caroline Garcia, 7-5, 7-6(1) to reach the quarter-finals.
“It’samazingforme,really, because it was such a tough match,” Martincova said. “She’s a really good player. I played every single point and when we started, I was so nervous.”
“When you just miss out on medals like that you start to doubt yourself and think ‘I’m not good enough’ but the truth is other people have cheated”