JOIN USOlympic shotput champion Valerie Adams had expected her former rival Nadzeya Ostapchuk to get a life ban for doping offences that saw her stripped of the London Olympics and 2005 World Championships gold medals, the New Zealander's manager has said.
Ostapchuk has been handed a retrospective four-year ban, which ends on AugUST 14, 2016, after she tested positive for the banned steroid metenolone after pipping Adams for gold at the London Games in 2012.
Tests last year of samples the Belarusian gave at the 2005 world athletics championships, where she won gold, also found traces of the steroids formestane and 4-hydroxytestosterone.
Her ban will virtually rule her out of the 2016 Olympics with the suspension due to end during the athletics competition in Rio, though Adams' manager Nick Cowan said they felt the Belarusian had deserved a life ban for a second offence.
"Our understanding is that Ostapchuk has tested positive twice for drugs," Cowan told Radio New Zealand. "You would normally expect that you could face a life ban.
"To be honest we were expecting for it to be a bit heftier than four years but it is what it is."
Cowan said he had only been made aware of the ban on Wednesday after Ostapchuk's name appeared on the latest list of banned athletes issued by the world governing body International Association of Athletics Federations.