Looks like Valeriy Borchin walked the walk and won the gold for it. By ‘walked the walk’ we mean Borchin took what is apparently to be the main staple of modern Olympics – steroids and other performance boosters.
The Russian walker had been a bad boy when he had reportedly tested positive for EPO and maybe steroids just before the start of the Summer Games in Beijing. Yes, he snatched the gold despite his blood being tainted literally with what is many considered as the miracle drug.
It seems no sport is immune from the lure of this performance-enhancing drug. The Independent.ie reports the drama from Beijing:
The pace was hot and the sun was getting hotter but Robert Heffernan from Togher in Cork was going very well yesterday morning until “the Russian” materialised alongside him in the leading pack.
They were some 12 kilometres into the Olympic 20km walk final when Valeriy Borchin joined the front group. Heffernan had been up at the front from the start but now, said George Hamilton in commentary for RTE, “you’d be concerned about the ominous presence of the Russian.”
How right he was — Borchin went on to win it. He was “ominous” in more ways than one: it turns out that Borchin is a drugs cheat who had reportedly tested positive for EPO just before the Beijing Games but ended up taking gold anyway.
Still, another eight kilometres remained at that point and Heffernan was looking comfortable among the contenders as they hammered out the hard yards. The only interruption to his steady rhythm came at the water stations where he would swipe a bottle from the table and douse his head before picking up his concentration again.
Heffernan spent most of the first hour tucked in nicely behind them, concealed from the judges who were watching for infringements and issuing warnings to anyone caught ‘lifting’. Race walkers are supposed to have one foot in contact with the ground at all times but the slow-motion replays seemed to indicate that just about everyone was breaking this basic rule. The race became something of a free-for-all as technical discipline crumbled under the pace of the leaders and the pressure of the occasion. Only two from the field of 51 were disqualified.
Borchin also received a warning late in the race and by now he seemed to be running more than walking. In fact, he was flying and with 18kms gone had burned off the remaining challengers for gold. He came home in 79 minutes; Heffernan finished in eighth place some 95 seconds behind the winner. With 43 athletes behind him in an Olympic final, it was a world-class performance.
But the athlete who had lost the most, according to the article, was Jefferson Perez. The 34-year-old Ecuadorian took the silver in the said event and many say he deserved that gold more than his Russian opponent.
Perez won gold at the Atlanta Games in 1996; he came fourth in Sydney and fourth again in Athens. A national hero in his native Ecuador, he was given the title there of sportsman of the 20th century. We can only assume that his country, on the other side of the world, came to a standstill as they gathered around their television sets to watch him go for glory one more time. They would have seen their ageing champion hanging onto Borchin in a sport that is easy to ridicule but brutally tough to endure. He lasted longer than anyone else in the scattered field and had the silver medal wrapped up long before he entered the Bird’s Nest stadium for the final stretch of the race.
What baffled many sport observers was how Borchin was able to join in the game despite the fact that days prior to the event Russian athletics officials openly admitted that Borchin was among those who tested positive for the banned compound. The testing was administered in an out-of-competition screening last April. It was reported that he was dropped from his country’s Olympic team and how Borchin got back in and participate in the Olympics remains unclear. Considering that this is not the first time he was found out to be cutting corners with PEDs, contributes more to this puzzle. Borchin was penalized with a one-year ban in 2005 for taking the stimulant ephedrine when he was just 18.
And what’s adding to this Russian conundrum is when you take into account Vladimir Kanaikin.
And it could have been much worse for Perez and the rest of the race walkers if Vladimir Kanaikin hadn’t been one of the athletes caught with EPO in his bloodstream just before the Games.
Kanaikin smashed the world record for the 20km walk in 2007. His record in turn was broken by another Russian, Sergey Morozov, earlier this year. Morozov was favourite for the gold medal won by Borchin. But he withdrew in mysterious circumstances from the Games last week. No-one offered an explanation. “He has not come here,” said an official from the Russian athletics team. “We waited for him but he did not come to Beijing.”
Tags: 20 km-walk final, ephedrine, EPO, failed test, Jefferson Perez, team Russia, Valeriy Borchin, Vladimir Kanaikin
Posted in steroid nation, Steroids and Anabolic Steroids, Steroids in Olympics, Steroids in Sports
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