Olympia 2014: Biathlon relay: Olympic gold with eleven years late

If all the knits tear, Erik Lesser would make his garden available in Oberhof to hand over the Olympic gold medals. Lessers and his former biathlon colleagues Daniel Böhm, Arnd Peiffer and Simon Schempp can look forward to subsequent relay gold over eleven years after the winter games of Sochi.

“I am pleased that this is now really off the table and ended. And I can look forward to a new medal with a new color. Even after eleven years, it is correct that someone else is moving up when someone plays unfairly,” said Lesser of the German Press Agency.

Two objections – IOC is on the train

The German quartet now subsequently moves from silver to the gold rank if the IOC – as expected – uses the usual practice. Silver then goes to Austria and bronze on Norway. Like his relay colleagues, Lesser had sent his silver medal back to the German Olympic Sports Association some time ago, where they were kept.

The Swiss Federal Supreme Court rejected two objections to the Russian Jewgeni Ustjugow against decisions by the International Sports Court CAS about its doping lock and the cancellation of its competition results. As the World Association IBU announced, all the results of Ustjugows are now being deleted between January 24, 2010 to the end of the 2013/2014 season – “expressly, including its results at the Olympic Games in Vancouver 2010 and Sochi 2014”. In Vancouver, Ustjugow had won gold in the mass start and bronze with the season, two silver medals at the 2011 World Cup.

“This makes all legal funds exhausted and the judgment is legally binding. The IOC can now decide on the allocation of medals,” said IBU media director Christian Winkler.

Garden party or ceremony at the Olympics?

Like Lesser, Peiffer would look forward to a medal handover at the winter games in Italy next year, possibly in the Biathlon Stadium of Antholz. “Getting the Olympic Medal at the Olympic Games would be a nice setting,” said Peiffer. If that shouldn’t work for organizational reasons, Lesser would also be at home for a garden party: “Otherwise I hope that my garden will be ready.”

On February 22, 2014, the German ski hunters only had to give up the Russians by 3.5 seconds in a gripping relay race in Sochi when Schempp narrowly pulled the shorter one in the final sprint against Anton Schipulin.

Manipulated doping tests in the control laboratory?

Already in November 2018, the World Association of Doping procedures, also against the 2010 relay Olympic champion Swetlana Slepzowa, initiated, Ustjugow was blocked in 2020. The IOC then canceled the Russian relay result of Sochi and has so far not conducted a gold medal winner of the race in its statistics. In its list of results, the IBU, on the other hand, has been leading the Germans to first place.

The IBU assumes that the Russians manipulated data in the Moscow control laboratory in the course of the scandal about state doping at home games in Sochi 2014. In addition, the Integrity Unit Ustjugow, which acted independently of the World Association, had charged and blocked due to a doping violation due to anomalies in its biological blood pass in the period between January 2010 to February 2014.

That said Ustjugow’s lawyers

According to Ustjugov’s lawyers, his too high hemoglobin levels are said to be due to a genetic anomaly that his parents had already owned. But the Swiss Federal Supreme Court also dismissed the objection to this judgment, as well as that of Slepzowa. The doping lock of four years against Ustjugow no longer plays a role due to its resignation.