Long Jump, Women

American Brittney Reese had won the last two World Championships and the last two World Indoor Championships, and led the world list in 2011 and so far in 2012. She was favored but the Russians, Yelena Sokolova and Anna Nazarova, were expected to challenge her for gold. The defending champion was Brazilian Maurren Maggi, but she was not considered a medal contender in 2012 and did not make the finals. Before the competition even began, one jumper was out when Paraskevi Papakhristou of Greece became the first Olympian to be eliminated from the Olympics by Twitter, when she posted a racist Tweet concerning African immigrants in Greece and was excluded from the London Olympics by Greek officials. We’re not quite sure how to list this - perhaps DQtweet.

All the favorites made it through qualifying, and the opening round was led by Latvian Ineta Radēviča, bronze medalist at the 2011 Worlds, with 6.88. After an opening foul, Reese popped 7.12 on her second jump, which would win her another title. Two jumpers later, Sokolova improved to 7.07, which would be the silver medal winning jump, leaving the battle for bronze. That position would be held by Radēviča through four rounds, but in the fifth round, surprising American Janay DeLoach edged her out with a 6.89 mark that brought her bronze, as Radēviča would finish fourth. Reese won gold with only two fair jumps, her winner and a fifth-round 6.69, along with four fouls. Nazarova never got into the medal fight, placing fifth with a best mark of 6.77 in the second round.

That was how the event and the results seemed to have ended. In 2015, however, the IOC began re-testing samples from the 2008 Beijing and 2012 London Olympics, using newer, more advanced testing techniques, in an effort to find those who had used performance enhancing drugs (PEDs), but in whom it could not be detected at the time of those Olympics. This was one of the many events affected.

No medalists were affected in this event, however, the fifth-place finisher, Anna Nazarova of Russia was tentatively disqualified in October 2017 for a re-test positive, although the substance was never announced. She immediately appealed to the Court of Arbitration of Sport (CAS). After various appeals, in November 2021, the IOC announced her disqualification along with the disqualifications of Radēviča and Anastasiya Mironchyk-Ivanova (BLR), leaving only eight finalists who finished that phase of competition with legal marks.