‘This medal is validation that you were pretty good’
Goldie Sayers tells Pippa Field about receiving Olympic bronze from Beijing 11 years late today
The venue is sorted, the guest list organised, so too the outfit, music and even the exact moment Goldie Sayers needs to step forward for her big moment. “It’s been like trying to plan a wedding,” she reveals to The Daily Telegraph prior to today’s Anniversary Games at the London Stadium. In front of 100 friends and family, plus thousands of athletics fans, she will be belatedly united with the 2008 Olympic javelin bronze medal from Beijing denied to her because of a drugs cheat.
“I always try and see the positives in things and I see it that I can now celebrate with everybody which I wouldn’t have been able to do at the time,” she says.
As befitting someone who has spent the past 11 years figuratively playing the role of bridesmaid, Sayers was still coming to terms with her central role, not sure of how she will feel on the podium, wearing her 2008 Team GB kit and listening to God Save the Queen.
On that night in China, Sayers threw a British-record 65.75metres, only to miss out on a medal by the smallest of margins. Barbora Spotakova, of the Czech Republic, took gold, with Russia’s Mariya Abakumova second and Germany’s Christina Obergfoll third.
In 2016, Abakumova was stripped of silver after a retesting of samples showed a positive result for the anabolic steroid turinabol, moving Obergfoll and Sayers up a place. Sayers, who retired a year later with 11 British titles, had to endure Abakumova appealing against the decision, before the Court of Arbitration for Sport rejected the case in July last year.
Back to today and Sayers is adamant any lingering feelings of anger have dissipated. “I’ve never been wildly angry about it because it’s the most negative emotion,” she says. “The difference with receiving it so late is that you’ve had the benefit of time to process those emotions. My overriding emotion right now is just absolute gratitude, of everything it has taught me. Knowing that you did it, the validation that you were pretty good at something. The medal is the proof of it, almost.”
Sayers describes Abakumova as “not someone I was ever particularly friendly with. Potentially because subconsciously I knew she was cheating”. Perhaps surprisingly, she adds: “The saddest thing is she’ll never know how good she was. Maybe they don’t know they are doping, maybe they do. But I don’t think they get a choice. It’s cultural and endemic.
“Financially I would have made more money, being a medallist,
going into a home Games, especially because there was more sponsorship around. But if you think of it like that, it would eat away at you.”
Dave Collins left his role as UK Athletics performance director after Britain failed to meet their track and field target of five medals. Yet Britain’s tally now stands at eight as a result of retrospective doping bans. Sayers’ bronze-medal ceremony is the third year in succession the British Olympic Association has organised such an occasion at the Anniversary Games. In 2017, it was the men’s 4x400m team and then last year the women’s team also received their bronze medals, with Kelly Sotherton, a member of the relay team, also awarded her upgraded heptathlon bronze.
According to protocol, and with Britain’s other International Olympic Committee member, the Princess Royal, unavailable, it falls to Sir Craig Reedie – the World Anti-doping Agency president who is facing criticism from athletes and anti-doping groups – to present the medal. The irony is not lost on Sayers, but she prefers not to get drawn further on it.
There is another final element to today’s story. After Beijing, Sayers overcame knee surgery after a gym
‘The saddest thing is she’ll never know how good she was’
injury to head into the final preparations for a home Games in the best shape of her life.
“It felt like I could throw 66m standing on my head,” she says about setting a British record of 66.17m to beat the world record holder at the London Grand Prix Diamond League, the final competition before London 2012.
Her decision to go for one final throw would change everything, as she tore an elbow ligament before rupturing it fully when she got to the Games, and failing to record a mark. It would be the last time she pulled on a Team GB Olympic vest. Until this weekend, that is.
“I’m being presented with a medal from 2008 in the stadium that I should have won a medal in 2012 at a Diamond League meet where I broke the British record two weeks before that Olympic Games,” she says. “There is a reason this has happened. I don’t quite know what it is yet, but maybe I’ll realise on Saturday.”