GB’s Goldie Sayers, 4x400m relay team set for 2008 Olympic bronze medals

Sayers will be promoted from fourth after Maria Abakumova, who claimed silver, tested positive for dehydrochlormethyltestosterone, or turinabol, the International Olympic Committee said on Tuesday.

Andrew Steele, Robert Tobin, Michael Bingham and Martyn Rooney are also set for bronze after Russia’s 4x400m anchor leg athlete Denis Alexeev tested positive for the same substance.

The IOC added that 10,000m runner Inga Abitova and compatriot cyclist Katerina Gnidenko had also failed retrospective tests. Neither were Olympic medallists.

“My emotions sit in the Venn diagram of ‘joy’ and ‘anger’. I’ll be thrilled to call myself an Olympic medallist, however late, but that small change from fourth to third would have meant a lot more at the time, and it makes me angry to think of how things may have been different. I’ve calculated that I’ve probably missed out on over £300,000 in earnings – a far cry from the debt I plunged myself into trying to reach London 2012.

“Most importantly, if Russia hadn’t been in the picture, me and my team-mates would have also had that symbolic moment of receiving recognition for our work. Honestly, in a 12-year career, I’ve never had the luck to experience that kind of joy. I’ve only ever really known dissatisfaction with my results. It would have been such an important psychological (and financial) change if I had gotten that bronze at the time.

“I agree that technology permitting, every single participant in the Olympics should have their samples stored and retested once a year, that would be a much stronger deterrent than any other measure so far proposed.”