COLUMN - The dirtiest race in sports history – how doping was practiced at the 2012 Summer Games

Eeny meny muh... and you're out! Like a counting rhyme, the runners in the 1500-meter final of the 2012 Olympic Games were dropped from the rankings. The Guardian has chronicled this dark hour in athletics . The conclusion is devastating.

The organizers had promised clean, fair decisions and invested heavily in the fight against doping . They installed a huge laboratory with the most modern analytical methods, and more than a thousand men and women worked tirelessly. The result: eight positive samples. This would later prove to be ridiculous.

The women's 1500-meter race is symbolic of this. On the day of the opening ceremony, it was announced that one of the favorites, Mariem Alaoui Selsouli , had been withdrawn. She had tested positive for doping three weeks earlier. It wasn't until twelve years later that the full extent of the scandal became clear: a total of nine runners were exposed as cheats.

One of those who reached the Olympic final was Britain's Lisa Dobriskey , who crossed the finish line in tenth place. Shortly after the race, she told the BBC : "I don't think everyone was running on the same level." American Shannon Rowbury later said it seemed to her as if some of them had simply been able to shift up a gear at the crucial moment.

This additional step is called doping: First to be caught was Cakir Alptekin , the supposed Olympic champion. In 2013, it was revealed that her blood test showed doping, and in 2015, she was banned for eight years. The sanction was so harsh because she had already been caught in 2004. But that wasn't enough: In 2016, a follow-up analysis of her urine from the London Games came back positive, and Alptekin was permanently banned from the sport.

Alptekin's compatriot Gamze Bulut inherited the Olympic gold, albeit only temporarily. In 2017, she too was caught using the blood passport and retroactively removed from the podium. Absurd blood profiles had previously exposed Belarusian Natallia Kareiva and Russian Yekaterina Kostetskaya . This method, still new in London, led to a major cleanup in athletics. But the cheaters soon learned how to stay under the radar.

The re-analysis of frozen doping samples from London 2012 led to a further wave of convictions. In 2022, the Russian Tatyana Tomashova , who had temporarily moved up to silver, was also caught. Across all sports, the re-tests revealed a total of 31 medal winners as cheats.

Maryam Yusuf Jamal , competing for Bahrain, was awarded gold in 2021 for the 1500-meter race held nine years earlier. Second today is Abeba Aregawi , who was also subject to doping proceedings in 2016. Shannon Rowbury is still waiting for her bronze medal.

And Lisa Dobriskey , who had already raised a warning finger after the race, is doing Pilates today. She says she hasn't watched a single minute of the Olympics on TV since 2012.

An article from the « NZZ am Sonntag »