FORMER Basingstoke and Mid Hants athlete Robert Tobin will be awarded an Olympic bronze medal later this year.

This is because the Great Britain 4x 400m relay team which finished fourth at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, have been promoted to third, following a failed drugs test.

Russian athlete Denis Alekseyev, was the guilty runner, who ran the anchor leg for the former bronze medallist in Beijing.

Tobin ran the second leg in China and along with Andrew Steele, Michael Bingham and Martyn Rooney and the quartet are likely to receive their medal at either the Anniversary Games in London or at the World Championships at the same venue.

Winning an Olympic bronze means Tobin now has a complete set of medals from all the major championships having won silver at the World Championships in the World Championship in Berlin in 2009, Three European Championship silver medal and a bronze in the Commonwealth Games in Delhi.

Talking about his belated medal Tobin said: “It is a very strange feeling when I found out we were going to receive the medal. As we never got to celebrate at the time it happened.

“In fact it was disappointment for us and we felt after running so well in the heats we had a good chance of winning a medal.”

Tobin added: “Of course it is every athletes dream to win an Olympic medal and this was the one I was missing, so I am very pleased to have completed the set.”