Dylan Armstrong to get Olympic bronze from Beijing Games
The Canadian Press | Posted: August 20, 2014 2:59 PM | Last Updated: August 21, 2014
Lifetime ban given to 3rd-place finisher from Belarus
It took six years, but Canadian shot putter Dylan Armstrong is finally getting his Olympic medal.
Armstrong, of Kamloops, B.C., will be awarded the Olympic bronze from the 2008 Beijing Games, the Canadian Olympic Committee announced Wednesday, confirming that the International Olympic Committee has decided to award Armstrong with the medal.
Armstrong finished fourth in the shot put competition in Beijing, less than one centimetre behind third-place finisher Andrei Mikhnevich of Belarus.
But Mikhnevich was slapped with a lifetime ban for doping in 2013. He was suspended after renewed tests from the 2005 world championships in Helsinki.
It was his second doping offence, which comes with an automatic lifetime ban and effectively wipes out all his results past that time.
"As a result of a lifetime ban of shot putter Andrei Mikhnevich by the International Association of Athletics Federations [IAAF], the International Olympic Committee [IOC] has awarded Armstrong the Olympic bronze," the COC said in a statement.
It took a while for the process to get to this point, but the IOC finally informed the COC that the updated results are now official.
Armstrong, 33, was scheduled to participate in a conference call Thursday with COC president Marcel Aubut and Athletics Canada CEO Rob Guy for the formal announcement.
Armstrong will be given the medal at a later date, a COC spokesperson said.
Last month, Armstrong received a 2010 world indoor championship bronze. Mikhnevich originally took silver at that event while the Canadian finished fourth.
Armstrong got the world indoor medal first as it only needed rubber stamping from the IAAF.
The Olympic bronze was a longer process as it needed to go through both the IAAF and the IOC.
The Canadian is aiming to compete at the 2015 world outdoor championships in Beijing and the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, where he hopes to improve on a disappointing fifth-place finish at the 2012 London Games.