When it comes to distributing Olympic medals in cases involving bans and disqualifications, it can some times take years to resolve.
It has been 15 years since the Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver, British Columbia but the dispute has finally been decided over a doping issue involving Russia’s Evgeny Ustyugov.
On May 21 the top appellate court in Switzerland rejected the appeals made by biathlon athlete Evegeny Ustyugov in cases of a medal dispute at the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver and the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia.
The Biathlon Integrity Unit and the Swiss Federal Tribunal upheld the ruling made last year by the Court of Arbitration for Sport denying Ustyogov’s appeals.
Head of the Biathlon Integrity Unit Greg McKenna spoke on the ruling saying, “while we regret the time it has taken to reach this point, the ruling reinforces the principle that doping violations will be identified and sanctioned, however complex the process may be.”
The International Olympic Committee is responsible for redistributing the three medals – a gold and bronze from Vancouver and a gold from Sochi.
The cases involving Ustyugov arose from data by the Moscow anti-doping lab and a “cover-up scandal” of “abnormalities” in the medical data, the BIU noted.
Evegeny Ustyugov last competed in the Olympic Games in 2014.