Nigeria’s Blessing Okagbare is set for an upgrade from Bronze medal into silver in the Long Jump women’s event from the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Okagbare finished behind Russia’s Tatyana Lebedeva in the Long Jump Women’s event. But the International Olympic Committee on Wednesday stripped Lebedeva of her silver medals in long jump and triple jump from the 2008 Olympics after her drug test returned positive.
Re-analysis of Lebedeva’s samples from Beijing 2008 resulted in a positive test for the prohibited substance dehydrochlormethyltestosterone.
Okagbare made the podium back then with a leap of 6.91m while Lebedeva had a leap of 6.97m.
Interestingly, Nigeria’s biggest individual honour from the Olympics is from the Women’s Long Jump event where Chioma Ajunwa won gold in 1996.
In a related development, Usain Bolt is no longer a nine-time Olympic champion after he too was stripped of his 2008 4x100m relay gold because his Jamaica team-mate, Nesta Carter, was found guilty of a doping infringement.
It means Bolt can no longer claim to have done the “triple-treble” – gold in the 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay in 2008, 2012 and 2016.
Re-analysis of Carter’s samples from Beijing 2008 have led to a positive test for the prohibited substance methylhexaneamine, according to the International Olympic Committee, and he has been disqualified from the 4x100m relay event.
It means the entire team’s victory in the event has been scrubbed out and all four members – Bolt, Carter, Asafa Powell, Michael Frater lose their gold medals.
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