Turkey’s Abeylegesse stripped of world, Olympic medals

PARIS: Turkish runner Elvan Abeylegesse was on Wednesday stripped of two Olympic silver medals and one world silver after a re-analysis of an in-competition doping test dating back to 2007.

The Ethiopian-born middle and long-distance runner tested positive on Aug. 25, 2007, after winning silver at the 2007 World Athletics Championships in Osaka.

Track and field’s world governing body, the IAAF, said in a statement Wednesday that her results from Aug. 25, 2007, to Aug. 25, 2009, have been removed, with the 34-year-old retrospectively banned from Sept. 29, 2015, to Sept. 28, 2017.

That means Abeylegesse will be stripped not only of that world silver but also the 5000m and 10,000m silver medals she won at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

The double distance gold she won at the 2010 European championships in Barcelona still stand.

Abeylegesse’s name was the most prominent among 28 athletes cited in Turkey in 2015 as failing drug tests in re-analysis of samples from both the 2005 and 2007 world championships.

She reportedly tested positive for stanozolol, a steroid, but tried unsuccessfully to sue the IAAF for making technical errors in the testing.

The disciplinary board of the Turkish Athletics Federation (TAF) had imposed their own two-year ban on the runner in March last year, having already withdrawn her from the 2015 world championships in Beijing.