Yes, gold things come to those who wait
Canadian weightlifter Girard expecting a 2012 upgrade with first, second disqualified
Christine Girard has essentially won an Olympic gold medal in weightlifting five years and two children after she raised the heavy bars above her head in London.
“Finally,” the 32-year-old said, after settling her kids enough so that she could speak about the news.
The International Olympic Committee disqualified the 2012 Games silver medallist, Russia’s Svetlana Tzarukaeva, on Wednesday after the retesting of her samples uncovered steroids. The original gold medallist, Kazakhstan’s Maiya Maneza, was stripped of her result last fall.
That’s means Girard, who became the first Canadian woman to win an Olympic weightlifting medal, should soon officially become the nation’s first gold medallist.
She will also be Canada’s only twotime Olympic weightlifting medallist, since she is also owed a bronze medal from the 2008 Games. Girard finished fourth in Beijing but the silver medallist, Irina Nekrassova, was one of 10 medallists from those Games stripped of their results last November because of retesting.
Girard started to write a book last year, when she first thought she might be awarded a Beijing medal and a medal upgrade or two from London, about her years between Beijing and London. “To remember how it was and what actually led to a gold medal in my sport, which is quite an achievement, it’s never happened before (in Canada),” she said. “It was really emotional for me to go through those years again.”
After Beijing, Girard trained in an unheated carport and worried about qualifying for enough funding to keep going every year.
“When I came back from Beijing people remembered that I missed my last attempt that would have been a bronze medal, so, for most people, I was almost good, I almost made it,” she said. “If I had the bronze (then) I would have been treated differently.”
Then came the absolute joy of winning a medal in London. Winning an Olympic weightlifting medal while coming from a country that takes anti-doping measures seriously is something many sport observers thought was near impossible.
“I used to think about my medal ceremony in London as one of the best moments in my life and now I think . . . of what it should have been,” said Girard, who lives in the Vancouver area where she co-founded the Kilophile Weightlifting Club with her husband, Walter Bailey.
“I’m really happy but it’s a bit hard to take.”
Girard, who grew up in Rouyn-Noranda, Que., was just 10 when she followed her sister into weightlifting and started off using a stick. When she competed in the 63-kilogram class in London, she lifted a combined total of 236 kilograms — 103 in the snatch and 133 in the clean and jerk.
“I was good,” she said. “I guess now I can say it because I’m not in it anymore. I always refused to say it when I was an athlete, but now it’s so far behind that I’m pretty proud of who I was.”
There is so much doping in weightlifting that everyone in the sport falls under some suspicion, and Girard knows there may be some people wondering about her too.
“I’m sure they retested my sample as well and they can retest it as often as they want,” she said.
“People who know enough about this sport in Canada will know that our athletes are clean. By the time we reach a high level we’ve been tested so many times there’s no way you could be cheating because you get caught right away . . . I never got offered drugs my whole career, it’s pretty amazing. And other countries, they don’t get offered, they have to take whatever they’re given.” Girard remembers being approached by some Australian fans at the London Olympics. They wanted a picture with her.
“I was like, ‘I’m just a bronze medallist, why,’ but they said, ‘No, you are from a country like ours, we know what this medal means.’ ”
Now, it’s almost official. “I still don’t have the (gold) medal in my hands but it’s a matter of time.”
The IOC release announcing the sanctions against Tzarukaeva did not specify how or when medals would be redistributed. With so many doping convictions in weightlifting and the podium looking more like a game of musical chairs, the IOC hasn’t been speedy about issuing new ones.
“I’m hoping it’s in the next few months but I’ve been hoping that for a year,” Girard said, referring to her Beijing medal and first London upgrade to silver.