ISLE of Wight athlete Kelly Sotherton received a second Olympic bronze medal from the 2008 Beijing Games yesterday (Thursday), following further revelations Russian and Ukrainian competitors had cheated.

Sotherton, 41, who originally came fourth in the heptathlon, saw her place upgraded to third after her two Eastern European rivals failed drugs tests.

The Isle of Wight athlete, in an interview on the BBC, had described her feeling before she received the medal at yesterday’s Team GB Ball in London, as “happy, sad, angry and bitter”, but that a cloud had been lifted and that she had always known the medal was hers.

Sotherton was finally assured the medal in December, when Russia's Tatyana Chernova, who had been upgraded from fifth to third, failed in her appeal against a retrospective doping ban, while Ukraine's Lyudmila Blonska was stripped of her silver medal after she had tested positive for an anabolic steroid.

It was the second medal from Beijing she has received retrospectively, it being for the 4x400m women’s relay event.

Isle of Wight-born Sotherton, who retired from competitive athletics in May 2012, also won heptathlon bronze at the Athens Olympics in 2004.