Wicklow’s Roisin McGettigan Retrospectively Awarded European Bronze Medal

Athlete Roisin McGettigan has been retrospectively awarded a European Athletics bronze medal after it was revealed that the winner of the race, Russia’s Anna Alminova, has been stripped of the gold medal. Roisin (34) took part in the 1,5000m at the European Athletics Indoor Championships held in Turin in 2009 and placed fourth on the day, missing out on the medals by just one tenth of a second. However, she has now been promoted to third place as Alminova was reportedly found to be doping and it was announced that the Russian would be stripped of all titles since February 2009. The Wicklow athlete, now retired, was presented with the bronze medal at an Athletics Ireland national awards lunch in Dublin held earlier this week. The talented runner flew back to Dublin especially for the presentation as she currently lives in Rhode Island in America. "The times that we are living in, we’ve been competing against drug cheats and you had to know that," she said speaking to RTÉ. "Hopefully this will clean up the sport now and there will be more medals coming back to Ireland and to clean athletes. “It’s the icing on the cake, I really enjoyed my athletics career and it will be lovely now to have a medal to top it off."