Shot Put, Women

This event was contested at the Ancient Olympic site on the Peleponnesus, as was the men’s shot put. The women competed first, however, and American Kristin Heaston opened the competition, the first athlete to compete in the Olympic Games at the original site in 1,635 years. The favorite was Irina Korzhanenko (RUS), who had won the Russian indoor and outdoor championships in 2004, defeating 1992 Olympic champion Svetlana Krivelyova. And Korzhanenko ruled the event. Her first throw of 20.41 (66-11½) was good enough to win, but she bettered it in rounds two and three to seemingly win the gold medal with 21.06 (69-1¼). However a few days later she was disqualified for a doping positive for stanozolol, an anabolic steroid. The gold medal then reverted to Cuba’s Yumileidi Cumbá, who had only made the final three throws with her third round mark of 18.74 (61-5¾), and was in sixth place until her final throw. Cumbá had been Pan-American champion in 2003, after winning a silver medal in that event in 1999 and a bronze in 1995.

Krivelyova originally placed third, after Korzhanenko’s disqualification, also trailing Germany’s Nadine Kleinert. But in 2012, the IOC re-tested drug samples from the Athens Olympics and Krivelyova was disqualified for the presence of an oxandrolone metabolite, an anabolic steroid. It has been decided that no bronze medal would be awarded in this event.