Kelly Sotherton continued her impassioned attack on what she viewed as Lyudmila Blonska’s tainted silver medal at the World Championships yesterday. In a prolonged outburst, the Great Britain heptathlete reiterated her “doubts” about the controversial Ukrainian’s performance.

“She’s been banned for two years and it’s hard to compete against anyone who’s been banned,” Sotherton, beaten into third place by Blonska, said. “Nobody supports her, nobody claps her. She’s cheated once. People you know turn over a new leaf, but I have doubts.” Blonska completed a two-year ban in 2005 for taking stanozolol, the same drug that projected Ben Johnson into sport’s hall of infamy, and Sotherton questioned her rate of progress since returning – Blonska won the world indoor championship (pentathlon) in March last year and has just set a Ukrainian national record of 6,832 in Osaka. “If she’s doing 6,400 [points, which she achieved at the European Championships in 2006] naturally, is she doing it naturally at 6,900?” she asked. “I’d rather her be on the juice and I beat her clean.”

Sotherton, who said that she is likely to switch to the long jump after next year’s Olympics, then turned her ire on the former athletes who have been criticising the British team.

“These ex-athletes are dragging us down by saying we’re a load of crap, but really we’re doing the best we can against a standard that is much harder than it was ten years ago,” she said. Sotherton’s anger was directed, in particular, at John Regis, the former sprinter who has suggested that 70 per cent of the British team should have been left at home. “The public think we’re money-chasing athletes, but he’s an agent – he chases money, that’s what they do. It’s all this ‘in my day’ stuff. It’s like older people saying ‘in the war’. Well, we’re not there now.”