New Delhi: Former Indian athlete Anju Bobby George said on Wednesday that she was "robbed" of an Olympic long jump medal in 2004 Athens Games by drug "cheats" and has so decided to approach the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) to investigate into the results.
Russian athletes Tatyana Lebedeva (gold), Irina Simagina (silver) and Tatyana Kotova (bronze) won the medals, but have since failed drugs tests in other competitions held after the Athens Games.
Thirteen years after the Athens Games, Anju, who had finished fifth with an effort of 6.83m, will launch her bid to claim an Olympic medal together with Australia's Bronwyn Thompson and Britain's Jade Johnson who had finished fourth and sixth, respectively.
The recent revelations about state-sponsored doping in Russia has emboldened Anju, the country's lone Athletics World Championships medal winner (bronze in 2003), to approach the IOC.
"I suspect all the three Russians did not win their medals through clean means. They failed dope tests later on and there is this widespread doping scandal in Russia. These are strong enough indications that all the three were not clean during the Athens Olympics," Anju said.
"I feel I could have been India's first Olympic medallist in athletics (by winning a medal in Athens). I have been robbed of that glory and the moment of winning an Olympic medal for the country by them (the Russians). The country has been robbed of an Olympic medal," she added.
Anju said she has already contacted with Thompson and Johnson and they will approach the IAAF and IOC together to investigate into the matter and do "justice" to them. She said all the three national athletics bodies will come together on the issue and approach the IAAF and the IOC.
"I have made contacts with Thompson and Johnson and we will take up the matter and represent our case together.
"I have been told that the Australian athletics body will have a meeting on March 31 to take up the issue and I will be meeting AFI and sports ministry officials this weekend in this regard," she said.
"AFI president Adille Sumariwalla, who is also a member of IAAF council, has assured me that he will take up the issue at the IAAF meeting in London shortly. It is all about doing justice to clean athletes," she added.
However, samples of the three Russians from the 2004 Athens Games might have since been destroyed since the 10-year statute of limitations has passed, but Anju said she will ask for investigations based on available evidence.
"When some of the old samples of 2004 Athens Games were re-tested in 2012, the samples of these three Russians were not tested. So you cannot say that they were clean during the Athens long jump event.
"Even during competition at the Athens Olympics, we saw these three Russians were taking something into the field, they were inhaling something. We saw so many things, so we suspect they did something foul to win the medals," she added.
Earlier, the IOC kept all the dope samples in their laboratory at Lausanne for eight years to be re-tested again and later on the limitation period was extended to 10 years.
So, it is practically impossible to find the 2004 Athens Games dope samples for re-resting.
