Ohoragu wins Gold

[Row Z Creased Shirt]

She WAS tested 14 times in 2006 - and was clear every time.

I don't think she is a cheat.

I was going to post the same thing. I don't believe she is a drugs cheat. She deserved her ban as them rules are rules, but she took her punishment and has comeback brilliantly. Sadly athletics has brought the cynicism on itself and it will have a long struggle to regain it's credibility.

Guilty or not Christine will have to put up with the suspicion, but not from me, that run was just awesome.

 

[Normal Rob]

So she's a sort of answer to the eternal question: 'When is a drugs cheat not a drugs cheat'? Hmmmmmmm


when they have never been proven to have taken drugs i guess.

you used to be innocent until proven guilty...

 

[Uncle Buck]

Is Linford Christie not her coach?

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Well I'm afraid after the various opinions on the Chambers thread that he's a cheat and the steriods have forever enhanced his muscles I find the situation with her a bit 2 faced.

She misses three drugs test in a year while on roids while building up her muscles and strength to enhance her stamina, stops the roids and takes a year ban but she's now got the physique to be very competative when she returns?

Cynical maybe but i'm certainly not the only one

Correct me if I am wrong but I thought that in each of the three cases the facilities she was using were closed and she reported her transfer to another facility.....only for the messages within the drug testing body not to have been passed on?

 

[Skint Gull]

Correct me if I am wrong but I thought that in each of the three cases the facilities she was using were closed and she reported her transfer to another facility.....only for the messages within the drug testing body not to have been passed on?

I don't know the exact ins and outs of it but i'm sure if it was not her mistake she wouldn't have been banned in the first place!

 

[El Presidente]

you used to be innocent until proven guilty...

That has NEVER been the case on NSC

 

[El Presidente]

Is Linford Christie not her coach?

Are you inferring it would be like a maggot in a dustbin going in after him?

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

I don't know the exact ins and outs of it but i'm sure if it was not her mistake she wouldn't have been banned in the first place!

The laws in athletics are pretty much tantamount to the althlete having to prove their innocence. As an example if you are found with drugs in your system no matter how they get into your system it is your fault. Under the laws she had technically committed the offence of three missed tests. But, it was shown that facilities were closed and she had reported this to the appropriate person....but the messages had not been passed on quickly enough. As technically it is her responsibility to ensure the message is received she got banned. Upon review it was lifted.

I also understand that there are hundreds of athletes with one or two missed tests to their names which like hers are simply due to logistics or other problems such as flights to training camps being delayed etc.

 

[Falmer Flutter ©]

I don't know the exact ins and outs of it

And here endeth your useful contribution to this thread.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

And here endeth your useful contribution to this thread.

...and I bet Skintgull is the type of person who would shout injustice from the roof tops if they were caught doing 31 in a 30.

 

[Storer68]

Tarnished gold IMHO

Missing tests is no different to testing positive. managed by Linford Christie as well........

She only became a different case to the British Olympic Association when she threatened them with running for Nigeria (with whom she holds dual nationality) if her Olympic ban was upheld.

Paul Kelso The Guardian, Thursday August 30 2007
Article history
Just 22 days after returning to competitive athletics from a year-long drugs ban that threatened to end her career, Christine Ohuruogu yesterday secured Britain's first gold medal of the world championships, winning the 400m with a performance as unexpected as it was redemptive.
Ohuruogu, who was banned after missing three out-of-competition drugs tests in 2006, led team-mate Nicola Sanders to secure a British one-two in Osaka, Japan.

"It is amazing," Ohuruogu said. "The race was very close but all the negativity which has been said about me and written about me just spurred me on. I have kept my head down during the year. I always had this aim of making the world championships and I can walk about with my head held high."

While the result brought delight to Ohuruogu and the GB squad, it will be greeted more equivocally by those uneasy at her swift return to the international arena.

Under British Olympic Association regulations, having been convicted of a drugs offence, Ohuruogu is banned for life from competing in the Olympics and it remains to be seen whether she will be able to participate in Beijing next summer.

Her appeal against the ban is expected to be heard in October and recent precedents involving athletes who have been reinstated by the BOA suggest she will be available for selection.

Earlier this year Ohuruogu, who has Nigerian heritage, threatened to compete in Beijing under another flag if the ban was upheld, but after her victory last night she called on the BOA to reinstate her.

"Right now I don't know what's happening with my Olympic appeal and I don't care, but I am hoping it will swing my way now. There are precedents for it, I'm hoping that's the case. I'm No1 in the world now and it would be a shame if I wasn't in the Olympics next year. You can put it that way. I want to be there."

Regardless of whether Ohuruogu lines up in China next summer, last night's success already represents a remarkable reversal of fortune.

She shot to prominence in March 2006 after winning 400m gold at the Commonwealth games. Having been born in east London, she became the poster girl for the London 2012 Olympic project and its aspiration to inspire the nation's youth.

Within six months, however, she was being airbrushed from the Olympic literature after UK Athletics suspended her for a year for missing three out-of-competition drugs tests. Athletes are required to provide drugs testers with their whereabouts for one hour a day, five days-a-week.

Three times between October 2005 and July 2006 officials arrived to test Ohuruogu and three times she was not where she said she would be. While she maintains she has an innocent explanation, a fact accepted by every tribunal that has examined her case, under the sport's strict-liability rules anyone missing three tests in 18 months is guilty of a doping offence.

Ohuruogu won few friends outside the sport by fighting an expensive legal battle over her suspension. Her relationship with manager Linford Christie, himself banned for failing a drugs test, has also brought negative comment. It is significant, however, that other members of the British team, including those critical of athletes they suspect of using drugs, appear to have accepted her return to the team.

Yesterday's victory will enable her to clear her legal debts. Whatever doubts linger about the true value of her medal, her commitment appears beyond doubt. In every round of the competition she ran a season's best time, and the final was only her fifth race since returning to the track.

"The last year has been very hard, but I trained and got up every day and did my work," she said. "It might not have been this year, it might have been another year, but when you work hard and you know you have done nothing wrong, and you are a honest person, something will work out for you in the end."

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

GOLD!

Well done to the model professional!

Who cares about a serial drug test dodger

 

[Storer68]

Are you inferring it would be like a maggot in a dustbin going in after him?

already banned for being a drugs cheat

from UK Athletics

But totally unexpectedly in 1999, he started racing indoors. He ran 6.57 at Karlsruhe in the January and when he returned to Germany to race in Dortmund the following month, it changed his life.

He was there as a bet to show young stars Campbell and Merry that he could still do it - but after finishing fourth in the race, a routine drugs test shown excessive levels of the anabolic steroid nandrolone.


With other positives for this drug, it proved to be a cause celebre – and all concerned were cleared by UK Athletics who said “it could not be proved beyond reasonable doubt” but the IAAF upheld a two-year-ban. Christie’s sample apparently contained nearly 100 times the permitted limit of nandrolone.

 

[Skint Gull]

And here endeth your useful contribution to this thread.

Of course, better not give my opinion eh, obviously everyone else on here knows exactly why she missed the test as well don't they!

...and I bet Skintgull is the type of person who would shout injustice from the roof tops if they were caught doing 31 in a 30.

I can assure you I'd probably be the last person who'd complain about something like that. As far as I am concerned the girl has brought all the doubts about her on herself and she gets no sympathy from me.

I know it's not exactly the same but if somebody got pulled over and refused to take a breathe test people would assume they had something to hide. The fact she's missed tests will always put the doubt into peoples minds

 

[The Large One]

Missing tests is no different to testing positive.

Er... yes it is.

 

[El Presidente]

Missing tests is no different to testing positive.

That's a bit like saying every man is a rapist, as he has a willy

 

[logan89]

Ok the thing to remember is that it sounds like alot of tests to miss, but these tests are out of competition and in an 18 month period she had about 17 of these, 3 which she missed. It is prety much a monthly thing. There must be something you have missed that you do every month, 3 times in 1 and a half years. But along with these she was getting tested at the major competitions that she was at and in all of these, she has never tested positive.

And is it that suprising that she has done so well when she came back. She has still been training, probably harder then ever, and wouldn't have to be doing all the traveling to comps which takes it out of them. I mean, i remember when Cantona came back from time of and was beter then ever.

 

[desprateseagull]

hmm.. any reasons given for the THREE missed tests? it wou;d have only taken one for all the suspcison to go away. unless..?

 

[Easy 10]

I think we're all ignoring the important fact here, in that she looks remarkably like Emmanuel Adebayor.