Aurélien Canot, Media365, published on Tuesday November 26, 2024 at 12:31 p.m.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport on Tuesday officially rejected the appeal of Russian Evgeny Ustyugov, gold medalist in the biathlon mass start at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics. Coming second, Martin Fourcade recovers fourteen years after a sixth Olympic title. And this on the eve of possibly being named president of the organizing committee for the 2030 Winter Games.
Martin Fourcade ideally starts a week which could be quite crazy for him. The legendary French biathlete, retired since March 2020, had five Olympic titles to his name. It now has six. The Catalan, as he expected, has indeed recovered, and this fourteen years later – the gold medal won by Evgeny Ustyugov in the mass start of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver before being dispossessed of it following to a positive doping control (Editor's note: The hemoglobin level in his biological passport was found to be too high). The appeal of the Russian who beat Fourcade by ten seconds on February 21, 2010 on Canadian snow was rejected this Tuesday by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). It is therefore official (there remains a very slim possibility of a new appeal, but it has practically no chance of succeeding): all the results signed between 2010 and 2014 by this Ustyugov incapable of convincing the body of his innocence ( he played the card of natural overproduction of hemoglobin) are canceled and the seven-time winner of the large crystal globe of the World Cup (for 26 small crystal globes in total) crowned with a sixth Olympic gold medal, on this mass start in Vancouver which saw Fourcade, who got off to a bad start that day, overcome all his competitors one by one only to fail behind the Russian.
Before becoming the president of the organizing committee for the 2030 Games?
Third in the race before Ustyugov's disqualification, the Slovak Pavol Hurajt recovered the silver medal, while the Austrian Christoph Sumann, who had failed at the foot of the podium, was finally part of the Top 3, medal of bronze at the key. Crowned with this sixth Olympic gold medal (he has thirteen world titles to his incredible record) in his career after having already been crowned in the individual and the pursuit in Sochi in 2014 as well as in the pursuit, the mass start and the relay mixed in Pyeongchang in 2018, Fourcade now has a meeting on Wednesday at Matignon with Prime Minister Michel Barnier on the eve of possibly being appointed president of the organizing committee for the Olympic Games and 2030 Paralympics in France. Vincent Jay is also running for the position, but the now six-time Olympic champion, whose candidacy is notably supported by the president of the CNOSF David Lappartient, seems to have a head start.
