Paralympics 2012: Discus 'winner' told to return gold medal

An athlete stripped of her Paralympic discus title after a scoring blunder has been told she must return the gold medal she was awarded.

Ukraine's Mariia Pomazan won gold in the F35/36 discus, only for organisers to promote China's Wu Qing from silver.

Pomazan, demoted to silver, failed to turn up to the rearranged ceremony at the Olympic Stadium on Monday.

She was originally told she could keep her medal, but that it would not count towards Ukraine's official tally.

The 23-year-old admitted on Sunday she was "very, very angry" after losing gold and apparently stayed away from Monday's ceremony in protest after being stripped of the medal she was awarded last Friday.

The scoring blunder also resulted in Bao Jiongyu of China dropping out of the medals, while Australia's Katherine Proudfoot was upgraded to third from fifth.

Craig Spence, from the International Paralympic Commission (IPC), said: "We will ask the three medallists who received their medals on Friday, when the wrong result was announced, to hand back those medals. We've made a request."

The scoring blunder resulted in changes in seven of the top 10 and all of the top five positions.

Paralympic organisers said in a statement: "All combined-class field events use a points scoring system where final positions are determined by points rather than distance.

"In the women's combined-class discus event [F35/36], incorrect medals were awarded following the use of inaccurate results data. We sincerely apologise to the athletes affected.

"The inaccurate data also affected the men's shot put F42/44, although the final medal placing was not impacted."

Pomazan used her frustration over the discus to win the women's F35/36 shot put gold medal.

She threw 12.22 metres for 1062 points, six points ahead of China's Wang Jun, with Wu Qing, also of China, getting the bronze.

"Psychologically that was very difficult after what happened the other day," Pomazan said.

"I was very, very angry. I didn't even know I could be that angry, so this brought very strong feelings for such a performance."