Good Sports: Gold Medal after Nine Years
It took nine years for Indian long jumper Anju Bobby George to get her gold medal, but she has now cemented her status as one of India’s greatest track and field athletes.
George, 36, was recently awarded the gold medal at the 2005 Monaco Athletics Final after the winner, Tatyana Kotova of Russia, was stripped of her medal for doping violations. She became the first Indian to win a gold medal at a world athletics meet.
“I am really happy and the wait was worth it,” she told PTI.
Kotova was also disqualified from the 2005 Helsinki World Championships, allowing George to move from fifth place to fourth. And there’s a slim chance that Kotova and one of her compatriots will be disqualified from the 2004 Athens Olympics, moving George to a bronze medal.
If that happens, George will have been deprived an opportunity to stand on the Olympic podium. But perhaps the Indian government can fly her symbolically from Athens to Mumbai—just so she can be mobbed by thousands of jubilant fans at the airport.
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