Rob Heffernan set to get Olympic bronze after Russia doping ruling

Ireland's race walker Rob Heffernan is on the verge of receiving an Olympic bronze with Russian doping cheat Sergey Kirdyapkin set to be stripped of his London 2012 gold.

Heffernan finished fourth in the 50km race walk at the London Games, as well as ninth in the 20km distance. 

But a ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) on Thursday has cleared the way for 50km winner Kirdyapkin to have his gold taken away.

It is expected to be re-allocated to runner-up Jared Tallent of Australia, with China's Si Tianfeng bumped up to silver and Heffernan to bronze.

The CAS decision is still subject to ratification by track and field's governing body, the IAAF, and by the International Olympic Committee.

Kirdyapkin failed a doping test in January 2015 but his ban issued by Russian anti-doping agency RUSADA only included periods from July 2009 to June 2012, and from October 2012 onwards - allowing him to keep his Olympic title.

The CAS has now upheld appeals by the IAAF on Kirdyapkin and five other Russian athletes on the grounds that RUSADA had been "selective" in annulling their previous results after they were banned for irregularities in their biological passports.

Heffernan told Irish radio station Today FM: "I'm buzzing. I got a generic email off the Court of Arbitration for Sport (containing the judgment).

"I had to read it a few times just in case I made a mistake.

"That makes me an Olympic bronze medallist and it's unreal."

The 38-year-old, who also competed at the 2000, 2004 and 2008 Olympics, won World Championship gold in 2013, and is in training for Rio, has previously been upgraded to a 2010 European bronze thanks to another Russian doping offence.

He added: "It's been dragging on and people in Cork have been coming up and congratulating me on being a new Olympic medallist.

"A lot of people were congratulating me on the gold and I never bothered correcting them.

"I was half living the lie. I was trying to believe it myself. Now that it's made official, I didn't know how I'd feel about it. I'm delighted, I'm over the moon, it's unreal.

"It's something that as long as I've been doing sport and as a kid I've been dreaming of, winning an Olympic medal, and now to have one it's hard to take in."

Tallent took to Twitter to say: "History has been rewritten. I am Olympic champion."

As well as Kirdyapkin, Olga Kaniskina now stands to lose her silver medal in the London 2012 20km walk, with it going instead to China's Qiejang Shenjie.

From the 2011 World Championships in Daegu, South Korea, Sergey Bakulin looks set to lose his 50km walk gold, and Yuliya Zaripova her steeplechase gold.

The CAS also imposed disqualification on walkers Valery Borchin and Vladimir Kanaikin. Kanaikin had been handed a life ban by RUSADA but CAS replaced that with an eight-year suspension.

The six cases were based on the biological passport system, which tracks unusual blood values for signs of doping.

RUSADA had argued that its suspensions applied only to times when the athletes' blood values were extreme, but the IAAF said the timing of the bans was "selective."