Goldie Sayers and GB relay team set for Olympic bronze medals after disqualifications

Great Britain's medal haul from the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing looks set to increase with Goldie Sayers and the men's 4x400m relay team likely to be upgraded to third position in their events.

Javelin thrower Sayers and the relay quartet of Martyn Rooney, Andrew Steele, Robert Tobin and Michael Bingham are poised to receive bronze medals as a result of the disqualification of Russian athletes after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) issued its latest list of anti-doping sanctions.

Sayers finished in fourth place in the women's javelin in Beijing with a throw of 65.75 metres, narrowly missing out on a bronze medal.

However, she is now set to be moved up to third place after Russia's Mariya Abakumova was disqualified from second place and stripped of the silver medal.

Abakumova's doping sample was among those to be re-analysed following an intelligence-gathering process by the IOC that started in 2015 and it tested positive for the prohibited substance dehydrochlormethyltestosterone (turinabol).

Sayers discovered earlier this year that Abakumova was likely to be disqualified after learning of her positive test and she said at the time: "The reason I do the sport is to see how far I can throw and how good I am against everybody else.

"What drugs cheats do is ruin a clean athlete's chances of finding out how good they really are. You have the greatest moments of your life stolen."

The GB men's 4x400m relay team are also poised to receive a bronze medal after Russia's Denis Alexeev was disqualified after his retrospective test also came up positive for dehydrochlormethyltestosterone.

Alexeev only ranked 23rd in the men's individual 400m but he was a member of the Russian relay quartet that just pipped Britain for third place, setting a national record in the process.

The IOC has yet to confirm whether or not Sayers and the GB relay quartet will be upgraded as it insists decisions are made on a case-by-case basis.

Two other Russian athletes have also been disqualified by the IOC after testing positive for the same substance.

The duo are runner Inga Abitova, who finished sixth in the women's 10,000 metres in Beijing in 2008, and cyclist Ekaterina Gnidenko, who was eighth in the women's Keirin event in the 2012 Games in London.