A four-time Olympian, Olympic silver medalist, and New York City Marathon winner, Shalane Flanagan has had a wildly successful career in track and field. Despite this impressive list, the marathoner could have even more accolades to her name and priceless moments in her memory…if not for athletes who’ve used performance-enhancing drugs to gain an advantage in sport.
Those moments, and the validation and opportunities that go with them, were stolen from her by athletes willing to cheat themselves and others of authentic victory. In fact, Shalane’s Olympic silver medal from the 2008 Olympics wasn’t awarded to her until 2017, when she was upgraded from bronze after the original silver medalist tested positive retroactively. Most recently, her seventh-place finish in the marathon at the 2016 Rio Games was tainted by news that two of the top finishers in the race have since tested positive for doping.
Watch the full video to see Shalane explain how doping has impacted her career and how she views the fight for clean sport.
Video Transcript
I think sports, for me personally, especially as a young girl, gave me a lot of confidence, and it still gives me confidence today.
I feel like what I’ve learned throughout sport I can apply to the rest of my life: how to be gritty, how to persevere, how to overcome obstacles, and I can apply all those skill sets to my life. How to just be a passionate person and to go all in on what I love, and everything that I do, starting from when my eyes open to when my eyes close at night, has been dedicated towards my craft.
Running is so natural—everyone who was born with two capable legs and heart and lungs, it is just the most natural thing to do. And so, what’s such a pure, beautiful sport is tainted by athletes that, for some reason, feel compelled to not really find out what they’re truly capable of. And I feel bad for them that they don’t want to find out what really they’re capable of.
My career would look enormously different if the playing field was level. I would have felt a lot more sense of accomplishment with the time and effort that I put into it, but I have to remind myself it’s there; I just didn’t get to experience it and have other people recognize it, but it was there.
You know, I look at it as synonymous to, let’s just say, someone’s working at a bank and they embezzle a bunch of money, and the bank says, “Hey, you embezzled a bunch of money, so we’re going to fire you, and you can’t work here anymore, but in like five years you can come back, but we’re not going to get the money from you; you can keep the money, so you get like a five-year vacation.”
To me, these athletes need to give back the money that they stole from the other athletes, and I believe that all of their accolades should be erased from that day forward. They should not have any accolades to go with that.
I’m also not opposed to, it’s a big crime, and I think that there needs to be something really at stake, and I’m not opposed to athletes going to jail for cheating, to be honest, because you’re stealing dreams and money and opportunities for people.
You need to deter these athletes; there’s not enough to deter them clearly. Unfortunately, you know, we’re not the only sport—track and field and distance running is not the only sport affected by doping, so it transcends to all levels of sport, unfortunately.
I think the saddest part is, you know, fans, when they watch something that looks incredible, I think it’s hard because then they’re wondering, well, is there a reason why it looks like too incredible? Like, is that real or is it not real, and having people question whether a performance is real, and what the human body and the human is capable of, I think, is really ultimately really sad because people want to believe in magic and believe in miracle performances.
And they don’t want to question whether it was enhanced by a drug; they want to know that that person put in the time and the dedication to create something beautiful.
