Vancouver 2010 Games | Biathlete Martin Fourcade will obtain his gold medal 15 years later

(Lausanne) The world’s highest sports court has ruled on another doping case involving a Russian athlete and will likely award a gold medal to French biathlete Martin Fourcade, almost 15 years after the conclusion of the Vancouver Olympics.

The International Biathlon Union indicated on Tuesday that the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) refused the challenge of Evgeny Ustyugov, who had beaten Fourcade at the finish line of the 15 kilometer mass start in men’s biathlon during the Olympic Games. winter of 2010.

The Russian biathlete challenged a verdict dating from October 2020 by a CAS court which found him guilty of blood doping, following an in-depth analysis of his biological passport.

The CAS upheld the initial verdict, which imposed a four-year suspension on Ustyugov and erased all his results from January 2010 to the end of the 2014 season. He also won the bronze medal with the Russian relay team at the Vancouver Olympics.

Although Ustyugov could again attempt to have this ruling overturned in the Swiss Federal Court on procedural grounds, the executive branch of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) will now have the mandate to redistribute the medals in this event of the Vancouver Games .

Fourcade would therefore obtain the gold medal, the Slovakian Pavol Hurajt would be promoted to the second step of the podium and the Austrian Christoph Sumann would become the bronze medalist. Once the IOC redistributes the medals in this event, a formal ceremony involving the medalists is expected to take place as part of the 2026 Milan-Cortina d’Ampezzo Winter Olympics.

Fourcade’s silver medal in Vancouver was the first of his seven career Olympic medals. He then won two gold medals at the Sochi Games in 2014, and three more in PyeongChang in 2018, including the 15 km mass start.

Fourcade is now involved in the Olympic movement. He was elected by his peers as a member of the IOC in 2022, was part of the organizing committee for the Paris Games in 2024 and is expected to play an instrumental role in the organizing committee for the 2030 Winter Games in the French Alps and in Nice.