Olympian stages own gold medal ceremony

Australian Olympic race walker Jared Tallent staged a gold medal ceremony of his own Tuesday after it was made public that the two racers who finished ahead of him during his third-place finish at the 2011 World Championships were among those involved in Russia’s state-sponsored doping scandal.

Tallent, with the help of two friends, a pillow and a stone block, did his best to recreate the 2011 medal ceremony.

At the 2011 World Championships in Daegu, South Korea, Tallent finished the 50-km walk in 3:43:36, to nab a bronze medal behind the Russian duo of Sergey Bakulin and Denis Nizhegorodov. But Nizhegorodov was among the 14 athletes and nine medallists to be named by the TASS as having been caught for doping, thus voiding his silver medal. After the IAAF filed an appeal in 2015, Bakulin was stripped of his gold medal.

The updating of the world medal recipients marks the second time this year Tallent has had his medals upgraded on account of the Russian doping scandal. Tallent came in second to Sergey Kirdyapkin at the 2012 London Olympics in the 50-km walk, taking home the silver medal after crossing the finish line less than a minute after his Russian counterpart. Although Kirdyapkin was handed a three-year doping ban in 2015, the sanctions did not include his Olympic victory, a change that was made this past March.

Tallent will receive his gold medal from the 2012 Games in an official Olympic ceremony to be held in Melbourne on June 17.