Alysia Johnson Montaño's Long Wait For Olympic Medal Nearly Over

Alysia Johnson Montaño has waited nearly 13 years to receive the Olympic bronze medal in the women’s 800-meter run she knows she deserves.

And she is choosing to wait three more years — for the Los Angeles Olympics — in order that her big moment is celebrated just the way she wants it.

“My demands are I want to receive my medal at LA 2028 in front of a home crowd. I want it in the stadium. I want 100 tickets. I want a victory lap. I’m going to go like, `Where’s Beyonce'?’ “ she told me this week, laughing a bit at that last part.

This is the third time Montaño, a 39-year-old Cal graduate, has been through this ordeal.

Both in 2011 and ’13, she finished just off the podium in fourth place at the World Championships, only to have her status upgraded to bronze after Russian Mariya Savinova was stripped of both gold medals because of her involvement in a state-sponsored doping program.

To remedy that, Montaño, pregnant with her third child, was flown with her husband, Louis, their two kids and her parents to Doha, Qatar in 2019 to receive her medals. Montaño readily admits the process has been difficult to digest.

“I find it hard to put my finger on what the emotion is.” she said. “Because I’m like, does anybody know what the heck this is? Three podium moments, zero medals . . . three podium moments that were lost . . . none in real time. That’s very unjust.”

It took until 2017 before Savinova was stripped of her gold medal from the 2012 London Games. But that merely elevated Montaño to fourth place. Russia’s Ekaterina Guliyev (formerly Poistogova) remained the bronze medalist. Temporarily, at least.

Guliyev was stripped of her medal in April of last year, with Montaño getting the news in a text message from a friend. “I just started crying, to be honest,” she said.

Guliyev appealed the decision, further delaying final resolution. 

“I was like, come on you guys, this is so ridiculous,” Montaño said. “How long is this going to take? It just feels kind of torturous.”

The official word finally came early last month when the Court of Arbitration for Sport denied Guliyev’s appeal, paving the way for the International Olympic Committee to award Montaño the bronze medal.

“I think the thing that has brought me peace to keep me going is I knew it all along,” she said.

Montaño is a six-time USA national champion in the 800 meters and her personal-best time of 1:57.34 clocked in Monaco in 2010 makes her the ninth-fastest American in history. She ran 1:57.93 at the London Olympics, just 7/10ths of a second off the time by upgraded gold-medal winner Caster Semenya of South Africa.