British heptathlete Kelly Sotherton has branded Lyudmila Blonska's silver medal-winning performance at the World Championships as 'unnatural'.

Sotherton claimed the bronze in Osaka yesterday behind champion Carolina Kluft, and immediately launched a scathing attack on Ukrainian Blonska who was handed a two-year ban in June 2003 after testing positive for anabolic steroids.

After the conclusion of the competition, Sotherton said: "I think you can see by the reactions from the other athletes that we are not interested when she is there, we don't support cheats.

"She has cheated once, who says she is not cheating again? It tarnishes our event and we don't support it in our event, that's why she does not get the support. We would rather see Kluft win because we support her. We know that she is clean and we want her to win as we will always support the clean athletes.

"I don't know if I feel cheated, we will find out in a few months. Hopefully she is clean, but you want to beat people who are dirty to prove that it is not worth cheating anyway. I shook her hand, everybody shakes each other's hand, but it's just a sportsmanly thing that you do."

The Birchfield Harrier refused to back down today, telling BBC Radio Five Live: "When somebody has been banned for two years and only just come back in the last 18 months, and they've improved their score by 500 points from the score they were already doing on drugs, what does that tell you about that person?

"It's not natural. It wasn't natural before so why should it be now? It's quite controversial, but it's hard to compete against somebody when they've already been banned for drugs and then all of a sudden they've improved 500 points."