Süreyya Ayhan

Süreyya Ayhan Kop (born September 6, 1978 in Korgun, Çankırı, Turkey) was a middle distance track runner and was a European record holder. In November 2007, she was banned from athletics for lifetime after she failed a doping test.

Her father is a former amateur athlete, a local cross-country champion of her hometown Çankırı. He was both a role model and supporter for young Süreyya when she started athletics in the junior high school. In 1992, she started running competitively at the Athletics Training Center in Çankırı. "It was during a local championship and there my present coach Yücel Kop discovered me. I loved running since I was a little girl. I think it is the only activity that evolves and I still do" she said once. She graduated from the Kahramanmaraş Sütçü İmam Üniversitesi in sport and physical education.

Ayhan ran for the sports clubs MTA, Ankara and Fenerbahçe, Istanbul. Recently, she is in the Gaziantep Metropolitan Municipality Sports Club. She already holds Turkish records in 800 m (2:00:64) and 1500 m (3:55:33). She became the first Turkish woman ever to reach an Olympic semifinal during her participation in the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia. The next year, she became the first Turkish woman to reach a World Championship final. She was the best European woman athlete running 1500 m in two consecutive years 2002 and 2003.

Personal best time:

Career highlights

Prior to the 2002 European Championships in Munich, Ayhan was unknown outside of Turkey. In 2002, she produced a great performance to win Turkey's first gold medal in a European Championships by out-sprinting the celebrated World and Olympics champion Gabriela Szabo from Romania for the 1500 m title 2 seconds ahead with 3:58:79, leading from the gun to the finish. She was later named the 2002 European Female Athlete of the Year and finished that year on top of the world 1500 m rankings. The Turkish track star has been a scholarship holder with the Olympic Solidarity program since November 2001

Doping ban

Süreyya Ayhan, one of Turkey's best hopes for a gold medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics, withdrew from the games due to an injured tendon during a training in Germany. Allegations that Ayhan may have attempted to cheat on a pre-Olympic doping test surfaced in August after testers reportedly complained of being obstructed from carrying out their work. She was cleared of doping allegations by the IAAF, but the athlete violated rules while taking her test. IAAF ruled that Ayhan had not taken performance-enhancing drugs, but said the athlete had broken testing rules, and she was banned for two years. [ [http://www.abc.net.au/sport/content/200502/s1294119.htm "Turkish runner Ayhan hit by doping ban"] , ABC Sports, 2 February 2005] Her trainer, Yucel Kop, who is also her husband, has long rejected cheating allegations, but acknowledged obstructing a male tester from entering a room during a urine test. "It doesn't mean that we won't be punished" Kop said. "(But) there was no doping, no switching of samples, (just) violation of rules" he added. "I will not give up (running) until I have experienced an Olympic championship" Ayhan said.

In November 2007, she failed the tests while she was training in the United States and banned from professional sports for lifetime by TAF. Later, the ban was decreased to 4 years by Tahkim Kurulu of GSGM after an application by Süreyya Ayhan. [http://www.ikidakika.com/tahkim-kurulu-ayhanin-cezasini-4-yila-indirdi] But, Süreyya Ayhan took the banning to the court, and CAS will decide about her doping case. [http://www.nethaber.com/Spor/69370/Sureyya-Ayhan-Kop-ve-Yucel-Kopun-davasi]

ee also

*List of sportspeople sanctioned for doping offences

ocial role

Indeed Ayhan's own example might increase women's interest in athletics. Yet women's sports in Turkey might require more stimulus than her own example as still very little percentage of young Turkish women regularly deal with sports. According to official figures, Turkey's sports branches have a total 65,948 licensed women athletes of whom 3,584 compete in handball, 7 thousand in aikido, 6,350 in swimming, 4,697 in basketball, 15,180 in volleyball as the most popular branches. Süreyya Ayhan is one of Turkey's 1,632 licensed track and fieldwoman athletes, in a country with 35 million women population.

Personal life

Ayhan challenged the criticisms of her love affair with her coach Yucel Kop, a former cross-country skier. Ayhan's affair with Kop, a married man with children, had gained such unproportional media coverage in 2002 that it had become the subject of parliamentary debate when an AKP deputy directed questions to a State Minister. "How could the Minister keep a coach, who exploits his trainee, on duty?". The Minister's response was to start investigation against the coach and the athlete. Promising that they will marry, the two saved their career. The conservatist pressure on Ayhan aroused the anger of women's rights activists. One of them writer Vivet Kanetti dedicated her book to Sureyya titling a collection of articles on women "Run Süreyya Run". Kop and Ayhan married, although Kop's wife at first refused to divorce, but the voice of the critics is now hardly heard as Ayhan has won the hearts of all Turks with her courageous run as well as her courageous stand against the charges. "Mine is not a personal victory. We worked hard with my coach who is my love, my teacher, my father and my everything".

Dedications

On May 26, 2003, The Turkish Mint issued a 925 silver commemoration coin worth of 10 US dollars in honor of the 2002 European 1500 m champion.

The Turkish Post Office printed a commemorative stamp in conjunction with the Summer Olympic Games in Athens with a picture of Süreyya Ayhan that came in circulation on August 13, 2004. The Post Office broke so with an unwritten tradition for issuing stamps of past personalities only.

References