Indonesian lifter Lisa Rumbewas awarded 2008 Olympic medal after opponent proven to have cheated

L: Raema Lisa Rumbewas competing at the 2008 Olympics; R: Lisa being retroactively awarded the bronze medal for her performance at the 2008 Olympics at a ceremony in Jakarta on December 3, 2017.
L: Raema Lisa Rumbewas competing at the 2008 Olympics; R: Lisa being retroactively awarded the bronze medal for her performance at the 2008 Olympics at a ceremony in Jakarta on December 3, 2017.

Raema Lisa Rumbewas is one of Indonesia’s most decorated Olympic athletes, having won silver medals at both the 2000 and 2004 Summer Olympics for weightlifting. She made one more appearance at the 2008 Olympics, but fell just short of medal standing by placing 4th.

Embed from Getty Images

That was, until October 2016, when the International Olympics Committee retested physical samples from a number of athletes who competed at the 2008 Games in Beijing using new more sophisticated methods for detecting steroid use.

As a result of the tests, nine athletes including six medal winners were retroactively disqualified from the 2008 Olympics. One of them was Belarusian weightlifter Anastasia Novikova, who had won the bronze medal in the same 53 kg division that Lisa had competed in.

With Novikova disqualified, Lisa was retroactively awarded the bronze medal for her performance in Beijing, nearly 10 years after the competition.

The Papuan athlete, unfortunately, did not get to receive her medal amongst the cheering crowds of an Olympic stadium. After the IOC’s decision to disqualify Novikova, Lisa had to wait over a year until she could officially receive her long overdue bronze at the Indonesian Olympic Committee’s 2017 year end coordination meeting in Jakarta on Sunday.

https://www.facebook.com/ichwanovzky.afifarizz.9/posts/503250973391542

 

She was presented with her medal by Erick Thohir, the chairman of the Indonesian Olympic Committee. The athlete some have called “the strongest woman in Indonesia” was so overcome with emotion, she actually fainted and had to be taken to the side of the stage for treatment.

Lisa’s mother, Ida Korea, had accompanied her to the medal ceremony and explained that there was a medical reason for why Lisa had fainted.

“Thank you, Lisa was not able to hold back her emotions as she never thought she would get this medal. Sudden emotional changes cause her epilepsy to relapse,” Ida said as quoted by Liputan 6. She mentioned that a similar incident happened during the 2004 Olympics.

In addition to the medal, Lisa was also given a IDR200 million (US$14,000) prize from the government.

Doping scandals have rocked the Olympics recently, with the IOC announcing just yesterday that Russia would be banned from the 2018 Summer Games due to their systematic and corrupt cheating efforts.

 



Reader Interactions

Leave A Reply


BECOME A COCO+ MEMBER

Support local news and join a community of like-minded
“Coconauts” across Southeast Asia and Hong Kong.

Join Now
Coconuts TV
Our latest and greatest original videos
Subscribe on