Sonia O’Sullivan may be in line for a much-belated World Championship gold medal – possibly even two – after cold truths appear to have emerged about the notoriously dominant Chinese women’s distance runners of the early 1990s.

Better known as “Ma’s Army”, as they all trained under Ma Junren, they first came to prominence at the 1993 World Championships in Stuttgart: O’Sullivan was run out of the medals by three Chinese women in the 3,000 metres, finishing fourth, before winning silver over 1,500m, again behind another Chinese athlete.

Now, according to Chinese state media reports, all nine of Ma’s Army were forced to take “large doses of illegal drugs over the years”, according to one of the most prominent of those runners, Wang Junxia – who won the 10,000m in Stuttgart, and also the gold medal over 5,000m at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, where O’Sullivan was forced to drop out.

Doping

The IAAF, the governing body of world athletics, has announced its intention to pursue the implications of her admission by verifying the letter which, if proven to be from the runners, will potentially have consequences for their records and medals.

According to South China Morning Post, the letter was penned two years after Junxia set two world records in the 3,000m and 10,000m races – marks that stand today.

She wrote about how the athletes tried to avoid the doping regime by throwing away pills forced on them but she said Junren would inject the drugs into his athletes.

The letter, signed by nine team-mates, was sent to a journalist named Zhao Yu, but it remained unpublished for 19 years.

According to IAAF rule 263.3, if an athlete makes an admission of guilt the association can “take action” – perhaps clearing the way for O’Sullivan to be retrospectively awarded another two World Championship gold medals, to go with the 5,000m gold from 1995.