Turkey’s Gulcan Mingir poses on the podium with her gold medal during the medal ceremony for the women’s 3000m steeplechase at the 2012 European Athletics Championships at the Olympic Stadium in Helsinki on June 30, 2012. AFP PHOTO / JOHANNES EISELE (Photo by JOHANNES EISELE / AFP)
MONACO — A former European champion in the women’s 3,000-meter steeplechase has failed a retest of her doping sample from the 2012 London Olympics.
The Athletics Integrity Unit said Friday that Gulcan Mingir tested positive for the banned steroid turinabol. The Turkish runner won the European title in June 2012 but was eliminated in the heats at the Olympics in August. If she is retroactively banned for doping at the Olympics, it is unlikely her European title would be affected because it came earlier.
The AIU also said Albanian sprinter Klodiana Shala tested positive the banned steroid stanozolol in a retest. She raced at the Olympics in 2000, 2004 and 2008 and was expected to run in 2012 but withdrew before the heats.
Mingir and Shala both have been provisionally suspended pending hearings in their cases.
Since 2016, the International Olympic Committee has stepped up retesting of samples from previous Olympics in response to revelations of widespread doping and cover-ups in Russia. The program has led to more than 100 doping cases from the 2012 Olympics alone, overwhelmingly in track and field and weightlifting.