JARED Tallent will realise a lifelong ambition when he has an Olympic gold medal draped around his neck in an unprecedented moment in Australian sporting history in Melbourne on Friday.
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The Ballarat athlete will formally be crowned 2012 London Olympic Games 50km racewalking champion in a ceremony on the steps of the Old Treasury Building in Spring Street at noon.
Emerging Australian teenage racewalker Adam Garganis will have the honour of presenting Tallent with the medal, while Ballarat 14-year-old walker Jemma Peart will give him with flowers.
WATCH THE CEREMONY HERE
For Tallent and the international athletics movement, the elevation of him to gold medalist is justice – even if it has taken almost four years.
The now Adelaide-based 31-year-old was promoted to the top of the podium after Russian athlete Sergey Kirdyapkin, who was first across the line, was stripped of gold by the Court of Arbitration for Sport in March for doping.
Tallent said while he was suspicious of Kirdyapkin on the day of the 50km, given he was from a drug regime, he had no idea what might happen.
“I didn’t know what to expect.”
Tallent did not take long to launch a worldwide anti-doping campaign – ultimately being rewarded with Kirdyapkin’s disqualification and his own elevation to Olympic gold.
For the four years since London there has been no question in Tallent’s mind that is he the rightful gold medallist.
Tallent said it was extremely important to be getting the medal before the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in August.
He said this enabled him to go to Rio as the reigning champion in the event.
Tallent said he was extremely appreciative of the work Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates to make it possible for the medal presentation to take place in Melbourne.
Coates personally brought the medal to Australia from Europe.
Tallent said it would not have been the same having the presentation without family, friends and supporters from Ballarat and as far afield as Adelaide around him.
“That means so much. It couldn’t be better.”
Tallent leaves Australia on Monday for the last time before Rio, where he will be walking alongside his sister Rachel Tallent at an Olympics for the first time.
The racewalking team’s first stop will be a four-week training camp at St Moritz in Switzerland, followed by a week at an Australian Institute of Sport facility in Italy and high altitude training in the United States.
Tallent said with walking late in the Olympic program, he would miss the opening ceremony and arrive in Rio in the second week.
While this will be the third Olympics for Australia’s most successful Olympic track and field athlete, Rio will be Tallent’s first time in Brazil. This does not faze him though.
Tallent said since getting over a slight hamstring strain early in the year, his preparation had been similar to previous Olympics and he was confident a beachfront circuit and conditions would suit him.
He said like London the racewalking would be on a 2km loop.
“It’s great for the crowds. It adds atmosphere.”
Meanwhile, Reuters report that on the same day Tallent receives his Olympic gold medal, Russia will find out if the IAAF Council is to lift the country's ban from athletics.
Russia was suspended from all track and field in November after an independent report from the World Anti-Doping Agency revealed widespread state-sponsored doping.
Any thoughts, though, that Russia might have had about winning over the doubters among the IAAF Council members were probably dashed on Wednesday when WADA released another damning report.
It said that Russian athletes had continued to fail drug tests and obstruct doping control officers in the months when they were supposed to be showing that there had been a change of culture in their approach to the problem.
According to the report, Russian athletes returned 52 adverse findings, including 49 for meldonium. It also said there were 23 missed tests, which the report called "significant", 111 whereabouts failures and 736 tests were declined or cancelled.
The International Olympic Committee will have the final say on whether Russia can compete in Rio on June 21.
"I cannot speculate," IOC President Thomas Bach said this month when asked if the IOC would be prepared to overrule the sport's governing body. "This meeting will be to protect the clean athletes and ensure a level playing field for all the athletes participating in Rio."
