Dope cheats changed the course of my life, says Sonia O'Sullivan

Sonia O’Sullivan said her life would have been different if drug cheats had not robbed her of two gold medals early in her running career.

The Cobh-born athlete said she would have been a double world champion in 1993 and a world record holder for the following eight years, with a much enhanced profile.

“Having titles to your name, and the status, would have been huge, so in that sense it probably would have made a difference, but it won’t make any difference now,” she said.

“The only difference now is the records and the things that are written in the books will be changed.”

She said, however, she would be pleased to have the record put straight.

“Just knowing something that you questioned, something that you didn’t believe in all those years ago, that you were right and you were right to not believe it, that would give me a lot of satisfaction,” she said.

O’Sullivan was favourite to win the 1500m and 3000m events at the Athletics World Championships in 1993, but was beaten into second place in the 1500m by a Chinese runner and left in fourth place in the 3000m by three Chinese runners who arrived as world beaters with no record of achievement behind them.

It emerged on Friday one of their team mates, Wang Junxia, who won the 10,000m at the same event, had tried two years later to expose the routine doping they were subjected to but the letter she wrote, co-signed by nine of her fellow runners, was suppressed.

Athletics Ireland said it was writing to the International Association of Athletics Federations about the letter.

AI president Ciarán Ó Catháin said: “There are two gold medals at stake for Sonia O’Sullivan and we hope this can be resolved to finally bring an end to the uncertainty which has hung over the championships for so long.”

The IAAF said it had asked the Chinese Athletics Association to help in verifying the claims and warned it could move to strip athletes of their honours if it was proven they had doped in advance of successful runs.

O’Sullivan said that while she always questioned her rivals’ performance, she did not automatically suspect they were doping, as the Chinese authorities credited their success to diet and extreme training regimes.

Speaking on radio from her home in Australia, she said she refused to dwell on it and trained harder instead, going on to win gold in the next European and World Championships, at which the Chinese fuelled further speculation by failing to turn up. She had felt frustrated it had taken so long for the truth to emerge.

“The system was set up to to protect the athletes who were cheating more than it was to protect the clean athletes and even up until recently, it was probably the same,” she said.