Goucher said she hadn’t planned to pay much attention to this year’s Beijing Games. The figure skating and controversy over Valieva sucked her in. She watches with a grimace.
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“This whole situation is just a slap in the face to all the clean athletes,” Goucher said, speaking this week by phone from her home in Boulder, Colo.What became clear as we spoke is something worth remembering: The psychological burden that weighs on athletes who play by the rules as they square off against those who don’t. “We’re asking the other skaters to be mentally strong beyond what anybody should ever be asked,” she said. “We’re asking them to say, ‘Hey, this person has had a positive test, but you know, you need to ignore that and go in there and still believe you can do it. Even though this other athlete potentially has an advantage that you could never have, rise to the occasion. It’s ridiculous.”Goucher in 2017.Credit…Frank Augstein/Associated PressGoucher never won an Olympic medal. But she did have a breakout performance at the 2007 world championships in Osaka, Japan, placing third in the 10,000-meter run, becoming the first American to win a medal in the event.Updated Feb. 16, 2022, 3:20 a.m. ETThe bronze was hailed by the American track community as proof that distance runners born and raised in the United States could compete with anyone. But these days, she can’t help thinking about what her career would have been like if she’d stood on that podium and received the silver medal instead of the bronze, a seemingly small difference but one that would have meant not just extra prize and sponsorship money but also extra self-belief.She can’t help thinking about it because, in 2015, a re-examined blood test showed the second-place finisher in the Osaka race, Turkey’s Elvan Abeylegasse, had doped. After long appeals by her rival, Goucher’s bronze became silver. Track officials sent it to her in 2020, 13 years after the race. When she saw the small box arrive in the mail, knowing what was inside, she said she could not open it. There were too many emotions: joy, frustration, anger, relief. Goucher and her husband, Adam, another former Olympic distance runner, along with their young son, held an impromptu awards ceremony in their living room. Friends hopped on Zoom to congratulate her.