NEW YORK — U.S. 800m runner Alysia Montaño is set to earn her first two world outdoor championships medals, four and six years after she ran those races. She wasn’t in a celebratory mood about the news Saturday evening.
Russian Maria Savinova, the 2012 Olympic 800m champion, was stripped of results from 2010 to 2013 and given a four-year ban due to doping derived from biological passport evidence on Friday.
That means Savinova loses her 2011 World Championships 800m gold medal and 2013 Worlds silver medal. Montaño was fourth in both of those races and stands to be upgraded to a pair of bronze medals, pending a Savinova appeal.
Montaño has been outspoken against track and field’s issues in recent years, specifically the widespread doping problem. Savinova was first implicated more than two years ago.
So when Montaño learned the Savinova news while traveling to New York on Friday to race in the Millrose Games on Saturday, it wasn’t exactly a relief or joyous. She found out via Twitter mentions.
“I took it the same way I’ve taken every other type of news of this caliber and didn’t really think that much of it until I got to look it up myself,” Montaño said after finishing second in an indoor 500m race Saturday, her first since falling in the Olympic Trials 800m final on July 4. “I feel like for the past three years people have been tweeting me, good job, congratulations, and no news has come out.”
Montaño said the more overriding feeling was a bummer that she was in New York without her family. And it must be said she was exhausted and in need of fresh air after her race, not exactly the best environment to discuss the matter at hand.
“Here’s my moment, woo,” she said without excitement in her voice. “I should not be finding out from everybody else in Twitter mentions. There was nothing in my inbox from the federation.”
There has always been a part of Montaño that believed medals would never be redistributed. Now, she’s one step closer to receiving them.
On Friday, a post on her Facebook account read, “2 Medals from the 2011 & 2013 World Championships,” with a link to a Savinova article.
“It’s hard to say what it’s going to feel like,” to get the medals, she said. “Feelings are feelings. I only feel them when I have them.”
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