In a doping case that could yet result in Jenny Simpson receiving a world championship bronze medal, the Court of Arbitration for Sport banned 2009 steeplechase world champion Marta Dominguez for three years for doping. The AP and Reuters reported on the CAS ruling, though they had conflicting reports on whether or not Dominguez would be stripped of her gold medal.

 

Dominguez’s doping case has been winding through courts and governing bodies for five years. In 2010, she was arrested for PED possession in Operation Greyhound; in 2011; she was acquitted of those charges; in 2013, the IAAF suspended her for four years for “anomalies” on her biological passport; in early 2014, RFEA—the Spanish equivalent of USATF—cleared Dominguez of doping. (I didn’t know you could just clear your own athletes!) The IAAF and WADA won their appeal against RFEA at the CAS in Lausanne today, resulting in a three-year suspension and, in all likelihood, the stripping of her results from August 2009 to July 2013.

 

The 2009 race that Dominguez won in Berlin was outright besotted with drugs.  Runner-up Yuliya Zaripova (you’ll see her surname elsewhere as Zarudneva)—the 2011 world and 2012 Olympic champ—failed a biological passport at the beginning of this year, though the stripping of her results so far has only included a period beginning in 2011. And fourth-placer (and world record-holder) Gulnara Samitova-Galkina has never been linked to PEDs, but is Russian. And the Russian track & field federation was recently proven to have engaged in a state-sponsored doping system that was covered up by bribing the IAAF.

 

Kenyan Milcah Chemos ran 9:08 for third in that race in Berlin; Jenny Simpson ran 9:12.50 for a still-standing American record and fifth place. If Simpson is eventually awarded a medal, she would be the first woman ever to win world championships medals in the steeplechase and 1500 meters.