1,500 metres, Women

There was no clear favorite in the women’s metric mile, especially after Moroccan Mariem Alaoui Selsouli, considered a slight favorite, tested positive for a diuretic just before London. It was her second ADRV and she would eventually be banned for 8 years, although not officially until 2014. The final had 13 runners from nine different nations, but in the end the two Turkish runners would win gold and silver. The pace in the final was funereal, so slow that despite the top eight runners bettering 60 seconds for the final lap, the winning time was five seconds slower than the previous slowest winning time at the Olympics.

With the slow pace, the entire pack was together at 1100 metres. America’s best hope, Morgan Uceny, world ranked #1 in 2011, was running near the back of the pack at that point, only to lock legs with another runner and fall to the track. The same fate had befallen her at the 2011 World Championships, and she pounded her fists on the London track in frustration. Ahead of her the lead at three laps was taken by Gamze Bulut of Turkey. But she was soon passed by her teammate, Aslı Çakır. The two Turks were trailed by Ethiopia’s Abeba Aregawi and Bahrain’s Maryam Jamal. The homestretch was a mad sprint, due to the slow pace, but Çakır held on for gold, with Bulut coming up from fourth 50 metres from the line to win silver, and Jamal filling out the podium.

Alptekin had previously been suspended for doping, after a positive test at the 2004 World Junior Championships, but returned in 2006. Jamal was born Zenebech Tola in Ethiopia but in 2004 she and her husband sought political asylum in Switzerland. She was eventually granted citizenship in Bahrain which asked that she run for them and adopt a Muslim name. She was the 2007 and 2009 World Champion.

A few months after the Games, Çakır was sued by Turkish runner, Süreyya Ayhan who alleged that she deserved a share of the riches Çakır received for winning the gold medal. Ayhan Kop claimed there was a contract between the two granting her a share of the rewards if Çakır won an Olympic medal.

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.

After the re-testing, this was revealed to be the dirtiest known athletics event in Olympic history, surpassed only by the 2012 men’s weightlifting 94 kg class. The original 1,500 m gold medalist, Turkey’s Aslı Çakır, and her teammate, silver medalist Gamze Bulut, were disqualified for biological passport offenses, Çakır in August 2015 and Bulut in March 2017. The medals were eventually upgraded to the next placed finishers, Tatyana Tomashova and Abeba Aregawi.

Two other finalists, Belarussian Nataliya Koreyvo, who placed seventh, and Russian Yekaterina Kostetskaya, originally ninth, were also disqualified for biological passport offenses. Three runners who competed in the heats only – Yekaterina Martynova (RUS), Hanna Mishchenko and Anzhelika Shevchenko, both of Ukraine – all fell afoul of the biological passport rule.

In 2017 Aslı Çakır was nabbed for another PED offense. This was her third positive doping test, as in September 2004 she had been caught at the World Junior Championships. After the 2017 positive test, Çakır was banned for life from athletics.

On 3 September 2024 the most recent silver medalist in the event, Tatyana Tomashova was given a 10-year ban by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and her results disqualified starting with the 2012 Olympics, thus losing “her” silver medal. In June 2025 the IOC officially re-allocated the medals and announced that Abeba Aregawi and Shannon Rowbury will receive the silver and bronze medals, respectively, in this event. Five of the 13 finalists in this event have been disqualified for doping offenses, and eight competitors overall.