Coates floats Tallent medal ceremony hopes

AOC president John Coates says if Jared Tallent is handed his 2012 gold medal in Rio then his wife Claire should be flown over for the ceremony.

Australian Olympic Committee boss John Coates says he wants to fly the wife of Jarred Tallent to Rio should the champion race walker be presented with his belated London 2012 gold medal there.

Tallent is set to be elevated to the gold-medal position for the 50km walk at the London 2012 Games after the man who beat him, Russian Sergey Kirdyapkin, was retrospectively banned for doping by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) 10 days ago.

Pending an IOC sign-off, Tallent will be handed what he was robbed of four years ago.

The 31-year-old is open to ideas about where a ceremony might take place, though has said while a Rio presentation would be special he'd prefer no distractions from his quest for back-to-back golds.

He'd also like to experience the moment in front of friends and family, especially his wife and fellow Olympic race walker Claire.

However given Tallent's Olympic race won't be held until late in the schedule, it leaves open a window for a potential medal ceremony in the Brazilian capital.

AOC president and IOC vice-president Coates said that option had been floated, and if it were to come to fruition then he'd want Claire there.

"Certainly Claire, yeah," Coates told AAP when asked if there was potential to fly family members over.

"An opportunity, as long as it doesn't upset him in any way, would be (to hold the ceremony) somewhere in Rio.

"You could do it in the village well before, or I don't know if the IOC would entertain the main stadium."

Coates also believed he had discovered a potential way to get Tallent's medal to him before Rio.

The IOC initially believed it had to wait until its next sitting in June to ratify the IAAF's recommendation to award Tallent gold, meaning a presentation would likely have had to wait until at least the Games if not after.

But Coates said he had found a precedent which could allow the IOC to redistribute medals as an administrative matter after a 30-day cooling-off period.


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Source: AAP



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