SPANISH weight-lifter Lydia Valentín has won a gold and a silver Olympic medal – four and eight years on from her performance, respectively.
The León-born sportswoman came fifth in Peking 2008 and fourth in London 2012, meaning that her bronze last week in Rio 2016 appeared to be her podium début.
But ongoing doping investigations led to the three women who 'beat' her in London being disqualified and Lydia getting the gold, which arrived by post on July 27 this year.
And this week, she has heard that she won the silver in 2008, and that it will soon be on its way.
Lydia moved up to fourth place after Russia's bronze winner, Nadezhda Evstyukhina was found to have high levels of artificial hormones and steroids in her system following re-tests of samples from the Peking Olympics.
Now, the gold medallist Lei Cao, from China, and Bulgaria's fourth-placed Iryna Kulesha have been disqualified following re-tests, meaning the silver-winner now gets the gold and Lydia, the silver.
As a result of her three medals in as many Olympics, one of each colour, Lydia has become one of the most successful female weight-lifters in history and one of the most-decorated sportswomen in Spanish Olympic history, having come second in her first-ever games.
Lydia, although delighted with her new-found prizes, does not subscribe to the 'better late than never' notion – the length of time the investigations have taken into the worldwide doping scam has effectively held back her career.
She was unable to join the medallists' parade or stand on the podium at the London and Peking Olympics, which would have made her a household name internationally, and missed out on her own personal moment of glory and that of her country.
Spanish weight-lifting has been 'seriously harmed' by its lack of protagonism in the last eight years, and other, up-and-coming competitors in the field – especially women – will have missed out on vital financial help and publicity because of its being an unknown quantity, Lydia explains.
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