Aussie walker’s win over cheats

CHAMPION walker Jared Tallent’s medal haul continues to grow even without setting foot on the start line.

For the second time in his career the Australian, who is a passionate anti-doping campaigner, has received a medal upgrade following the disqualification of Russian drug cheats.

Tallent, who isn’t competing in Doha because of injury, yesterday had two world championship silver medals added to his CV from the 50km events in Daegu in 2011 and Moscow 2013.

“It’s nice to receive medals for events that I should have received those medals for,” Tallent said.

The 34-year-old has been hampered by a long-time hamstring issue for almost three years since winning the silver medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics.

“I still want to go to Tokyo and be a medal hope, so it’s building towards that,” Tallent said.

“I’m looking forward to the national champs in December, hopefully I can get an Olympic qualifier there and have one last shot at getting on the podium.”

In 2016 Tallent finally became an Olympic gold medallist almost four years after he’d crossed the line in the men’s 50km walk in London behind Russian drug cheat Sergey Kirdyapkin. A special ceremony was held in Melbourne for the medal presentation after Kirdyapkin was stripped of the title by the Court of Arbitration for Sport three months earlier.

This time around Tallent was elevated to silver in Daegu after the disqualification of Russian Sergey Bakulin. His countryman Denis Nizhegorodov was elevated to gold.

The Moscow silver comes after retrospective testing led to the disqualification of Russia’s Mikhail Ryzhov.

Tallent now has six medals at major championships with Olympic gold, silver and bronze to go with three world championship silver medals.