It’s OK if you’re a little suspect of Andrey Silnov’s gold medal in the high jump at the 2008 Olympics. We are, too.
Silnov’s one big advantage seemed to be his height, at 6-foot-6, because his career seemingly materialized out of nowhere. It began in 2006 when he joined the Russian national team and made his first big splash by winning the European championships that year, then finishing as runner-up at the World Athletics Final and the World Cup.
Silnov was implicated as one of the major figures in Russia’s ongoing doping scandal in 2019, while serving as his federation’s vice president, and received a four-year ban.
