‘I beat people who I know cheated, and it made me feel good,’ says British running legend Kelly Holmes

Kelly Holmes offers up a palpable sense of resigned disappointment when talk turns to the state of her sport today.

She knows there is no escaping the topic, what with Russia freshly banned from Rio, assorted legalities still to be explored in that particular case and with the seemingly constant stream of claims and counter claims that continue to taint athletics at every turn. But Holmes also knows, and readily accepts, that her place in the firmament, thanks to those gold medal-winning exploits in the 800m and the 1,500m at the 2004 Athens Olympics, means she will forever be a spokesperson for her sport.

“As a fan, now, looking on from the grandstands I feel the frustration, too,” Holmes offers. “When someone does something fantastic on the track, I immediately question the result, just like everyone else does these days. I hate that fact and I wish I didn’t but that’s what has happened to the sport.

“What’s needed is for the authorities to come down hard, and maybe that will be the positive that is coming out of what is happening with Russia now. Maybe it will finally make people stop the cheating.”

Holmes says she knew – across a career that brought also an Olympic 800m bronze in Sydney (2000), as well as two Commonwealth 1,500m golds (1994, 2002) over almost a decade at the top – that there were competitors who were using drugs to improve their performances. But such is the intensely individual nature of track and field events that she says she could never allow what they were doing to affect her own efforts.