Doping Round Up
Maybe it’s because Le Tour is underway or the Summer Olympics are on the horizon, but it seems that the news is filled with stories about doping in sports.
The first that caught my attention was a story about three top-rated Russian runners, including two European champions, who were busted via the biological passport program. These were middle distance runners Yevgeniya Zinurova and Svetlana Klyuka, and marathoner Nailya Yulamanova.
My favorite aspect of the story was that Nailya Yulamanova had won the gold medal in the European Championship marathon only after the original winner, Zivile Balciunaite of Lithuania, had been stripped of her medal due to a doping violation.
I suppose this means that the original third-place finisher, Anna Incerti of Italy, will now–two years after the fact–be awarded the 2010 European Championship. You need an abacus to keep this straight!