Canadian runner hopes for Rio ‘redo’

Drug cheats robbed Hilary Stellingwerff of her Olympic moment in 2012.

The Canadian middle-distance runner hopes that Friday’s historic decision by track and field’s world governing body to keep Russia out of this summer’s Rio Games, will give her a second chance.

“To be honest, if it didn’t happen, it would cause me to question the value of clean sport to IAAF, and I would honestly question even being in Rio if I made it,” she said. “What’s the point?”

The IAAF upheld its ban on Russia’s track and field team in Friday’s decision that punishes the world power for systematic doping.

Stellingwerff missed the women’s 1,500-metre final at the London Olympics by just one spot. Since then, six of the 12 finalists — including two Russians and Turkish gold medallist Ash Cakir Alptekin — received doping bans.

“I hope I get the opportunity to compete in Rio, with clean athletes and with Russia banned, so that I can kind of do a re-do,” said Stellingwerff, who still must qualify at the July 6-10 Olympic trials. “I know it doesn’t make up for 2012, but it would help that the sport is moving forward in the right direction.”

Meanwhile, the chairs of the IOC Athlete Commission and the WADA Athlete Committee said they “commend and support” the move.

IOC athlete chair Claudia Bokel and WADA athlete chair Beckie Scott, a Canadian crosscountry skier who belatedly received a gold medal after drug cheats were stripped of their results at the 2002 Olympics, say they will “hold this decision as symbolic that the voices of the clean athletes have been heard.”

“We recognize that this decision is only one step in the process of ensuring that the Rio Olympic Games will have a level playing field,” Bokel and Scott said in a release. “But, we are heartened to see that the facts as presented by WADA and the IAAF task force have been considered thoroughly, and that the evidence has lead the IAAF to make decisions based on integrity — maintaining clean sport as a central policy.”

They added that they speak for athletes globally who want to ensure that the Olympics remain a place where politics does not trump principle.

“I think that clean athletes going to Rio can be really encouraged and heartened by the decision and what the position taken by the IAAF was today,” Scott said on a conference call.