LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) - British heptathlete Jessica Ennis-Hill is in line to receive a third world championship gold medal after Russia’s Tatyana Chernova was stripped of the 2011 title on Tuesday for a doping violation.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport also stripped Chernova of her bronze medal from the 2012 London Olympics and announced a new suspension for a separate blood doping offense.
Two other female Russian runners - Yekaterina Sharmina and Kristina Ugarova - also received suspensions for biological passport violations.
The IAAF referred the three cases to the arbitration court in February after Russia’s track and field federation was suspended for widespread doping in the country.
CAS ruled Tuesday that all of Chernova’s results between Aug. 15, 2011, and July 22, 2013, are annulled - meaning she loses her gold from the 2011 world championships in Daegu, South Korea, and bronze from the 2012 London Olympics.
Ennis-Hill, who finished second behind Chernova in Daegu, is now expected to inherit a third world title to go with her championships in 2009 and 2015.
Ennis-Hill said the picture of Chernova beating her in 2011 was “forever imprinted in my mind.”
“However much it drove me on for what I was about to achieve at my first Olympics in London, in my heart I just knew it was wrong,” Ennis-Hill wrote on Instagram after the CAS ruling. “So happy to finally be receiving my gold medal. Triple World Champion WOW.”
Ennis-Hill also won the Olympic gold medal in London and took silver at this year’s games in Rio de Janeiro.
Chernova had previously been given a two-year ban backdated to 2013 after testing positive for a steroid when a sample from the 2009 world championships was reanalyzed.
In position to receive Chernova’s London bronze medal is the original fourth-place finisher, Lyudmila Yospenko of Ukraine.
Russia had previously annulled Chernova’s results between August 2009 and August 2011 - dates which protected her Daegu gold and London bronze.
Ennis-Hill had filed a complaint over the Daegu results with the IAAF, seeking to claim the gold.
CAS said Tuesday that Chernova, Sharmina and Ugarova had all been found guilty of blood doping based on analysis of their biological passports, a system that tracks an athlete’s blood profile over time to detect signs of cheating.
CAS handed Chernova a suspension of 3 years, 8 months, starting retroactively on Feb. 5, 2016. CAS said her previous two-year ban would be deducted from the sanction.
Sharmina, a former European indoor 1,500-meter bronze medalist, received a three-year suspension backdated to Dec. 7, 2015. All her results between June 17, 2011, and Aug. 5, 2015, were annulled. That would include her gold medal at the 2013 University Games in Kazan, Russia.
Ugarova received a two-year ban, backdated to Sept. 7, 2015, and loses her results from June 26, 2012, to Dec. 25, 2012.
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