Six months after it became official, Olympic weightlifter Christine Girard is finally set to receive her proper medals.
The longtime Semiahmoo Peninsula resident and member of Langley-based Kilophile Weightlifting Club – who originally from Quebec – is in Ottawa this morning to officially receive gold and bronze Olympic medals.
Girard learned back in April that her bronze medal from the 2012 Summer Olympics in London – won in the women’s 63-kg division – was officially upgraded to gold after the two finishers ahead of her on the podium, Kazakhstan’s Maiya Maneza and Russia’s Svetlana Tsurukaeva, respectively – were discovered to have tested positive for banned substances, leaving Girard as the only clean athlete left from the original trio of podium finishes.
Prior to that news, Girard’s fourth-place finish from the 2008 Olympics had already been bumped to bronze – again, due to doping of athletes ahead of her – but she had never actually received the medal.
Today, she will receive both in a special ceremony. The event is to be live-streamed by CBC (see below).
More to come…
