After Klüft's retirement from heptathlon in 2008, Sotherton had been tipped by many people to take gold at the 2008 Olympics, including Klüft herself. However, after a disappointing performance she could only manage 5th place in the competition. Lyudmila Blonska was later disqualified for failing a doping test and Sotherton was upgraded to fourth. She had previously labelled Blonska a cheat, and questioned the validity of Blonska's silver medal at the World Championships in 2007. In December 2017 Tatyana Chernova was disqualified from 3rd place in the competition for doping, promoting Sotherton to the bronze medal. She was also part of the 4 × 400 m relay team which finished fifth in the final although the team was later upgraded to bronze medal position following disqualification for doping offences of the teams finishing in third and fourth place.