Pavey to get medal – 10 years after race

JO Pavey is set to receive the first global medal of her career – 10 years late – after it was confirmed she would be upgraded to 10,000 metres bronze at the 2007 World Championships.

The 43-year-old, pictured above, will be promoted from fourth place at the Osaka championships after world governing body the IAAF announced that Turkish silver medallist Elvan Abeylegesse had been disqualified for doping.

The latest list of IAAF doping sanctions revealed Abeylegesse had failed an in-competition test during the championships.

Pavey, who competed in her fifth Olympics in Rio last year, had an idea the upgrade was coming, with the news emerging in 2015 that Abeylegesse was among the athletes under investigation for doping after samples from the 2005 and 2007 World Championships were retested.

The 2014 European champion, set to race in next month’s London Marathon, said at the time that winning a medal so long after the event was “bitter sweet”, saying it was “upsetting” and “frustrating” to be denied her moment on the podium.

Abeylegesse’s disqualification means American Kara Goucher, who passed Pavey on the home straight in Osaka, is due to be upgraded to silver.

The Turk will also lose her 5,000m and 10,000 silver medals from the 2008 Olympics.

She has been retrospectively banned for two years from 29 September 2015, while all her results from August 25, 2007, to August 25, 2009, have been annulled.

Abeylegesse’s compatriot Gamze Bulut, meanwhile, has been handed a four-year ban for biological passport anomalies and will forfeit all her results from July 2011 onwards, most notably her Olympic 1500m title from London.

She was only promoted to gold after another Turkish athlete, Asli Cakir Alptekin, was disqualified for doping, meaning Bahrain’s Maryam Yusuf Jamal, who won bronze on the day, is set to became the new Olympic champion.