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Christine Girard can now call herself a Canadian Olympic champion.
The weightlifter has officially been upgraded to a gold medal in the 63kg weight class from London 2012. She’ll also be the owner of a bronze medal in the same division from Beijing 2008.
Girard was initially awarded bronze in London to become Canada’s first ever female Olympic medallist in weightlifting. That came four years after she appeared to have missed the podium in Beijing by just three kilograms. But in the last couple of years, amid numerous weightlifting disqualifications for doping, there were three that directly impacted Girard.
“It’s still not a closed chapter because I still don’t have the medal, but it’s the last step before the medal,” Girard said upon receiving the news of her gold medal. “Now we get to celebrate, now we get to make it real.”
It's now official! I can call myself an Olympic Champion! :) https://t.co/lk0NGKM6MQ
— Christine Girard (@ch_girard) April 19, 2018
The first inkling of a potential change in the Olympic results came in June 2016, when Kazakhstan’s Maya Maneza, the original gold medallist at London 2012, was found through a re-test of her stored samples to have the anabolic steroid Stanozolol in her system.
A month later, Russian Svetlana Tsarukaeva, the original silver medallist in London, was revealed after re-analysis to have tested positive for a different steroid, Dehydrochlormethyltestosterone. That was followed in August 2016 by the news that another Kazakh, Irina Nekrassova, who had been awarded silver at Beijing 2008, also produced a positive re-test for Stanozolol.
After the findings were reported, there was a wait time before the International Olympic Committee announced whether they would be disqualified.
Maneza was stripped of her medal in October 2016, followed by Nekrassova the next month, more than eight years after the offence. It took until April 5, 2017 for the IOC to rule that Tsarukaeva would also lose her medal. There was then a window for appeals which has finally come and gone.
That means that six years after she should have stood atop the Olympic podium, Girard will finally get her moment of glory.
The newest upgrades mean that Canada’s medal count at London 2012 remains at 18 (2 gold, 5 silver, 11 bronze), but now features Girard alongside trampolinist Rosie MacLennan as gold medallists. The additional bronze medal at Beijing 2008 puts Canada at 20 total (3 gold, 9 silver, 8 bronze) for those Games.