Remember Anton Shipulin’s legendary finish in the Sochi relay? Now, in a global sense, it means nothing. Russia was stripped of its 2024 Olympic relay gold medal after Evgeniy Ustyugov was found guilty of violating anti-doping rules.
The story is incredibly sad, but should we have expected anything more?
“I hope that no one ever takes away from us the medal that we have earned with so much effort.”
Evgeny Ustyugov went unnoticed by WADA and the IBU in 2018, when the former head of the Moscow Anti-Doping Laboratory, Grigory Rodchenkov, reported that 50% of Russian biathletes were doping. On the other hand, the fugitive professor highlighted only Ustyugov’s name.
WADA quickly opened a case and began to investigate Evgeniy’s performance in 2010 due to abnormal levels of hemoglobin. The biathlete himself proved that this was due to a genetic trait. The case was closed and everyone stopped caring about this story.
“What if the samples from 2014 are rechecked? I am definitely confident in myself and I am not worried. We have a gold medal in the relay. And I spoke to each of the partners and asked them: ‘Do we have anything to fear?’ They all assured me that no, everything was clean. We must be honest with ourselves and I hope that no one will ever take away our hard-earned medal,” Anton Shipulin told Russia 24 at the time.
However, on February 13, 2020, the news came: the IBU and WADA reopened a case against Ustyugov. Questions were raised about the athlete’s biological indicators from January 2010 to February 2014. Just two days later, on February 15, the IBU announced the disqualification of Evgeniy for two years and the cancellation of the results from August 13, 2013 until the end of the 2013/2014 season. According to data from the Moscow laboratory, the steroid oxandrolone was found in the Russian’s samples.
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The most painful thing was the deprivation of the Russian team of the gold medal in the relay at the Olympic Games in Sochi. Then not only Evgeny Ustyugov was left without a medal, but also his teammates Alexey Volkov, Dmitry Malyshko and Anton Shipulin.
“This morning I received the decision of the IBU anti-doping panel. I am no longer surprised, chaos is chaos. I have been living like this for six years. I am not surprised that in 2018 the IBU ruled against me for not doping and now, suddenly, again.
“Naturally, there were no arguments, no witnesses during the panel meeting. My friends told me that the Germans are behind this, I don’t know, anything can happen, but I don’t care who is behind it. I will go all the way, I have already gone to the Austrian court and I will go to any other. Time will tell who is right. I will only demand a public review with the participation of journalists,” Ustyugov told TASS at the time.
A month later, the once best Russian biathlete appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). But the coronavirus pandemic hit and the investigation dragged on for many years.
Victorious finish for Anton Shipulin at Sochi 2014
Photo by: RIA Novosti
official verdict
On 9 September 2024, the CAS rejected Evgeniy Ustyugov’s appeal, upholding the decision of the IBU and WADA. A similar decision awaited Svetlana Sleptsova, who was also accused of violating anti-doping rules.
“The joint appeal of Ms. Sleptsova and Mr. Ustyugov concerned two decisions made by the IBU Anti-Doping Commission in February 2020, which were based on analytical results recorded in the Moscow Laboratory Information Management System database in relation to samples taken from them in 2013,” the Biathlon Integrity Unit said in a press release.
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Stories
Russian gold medals at the Sochi Olympics. Relay race, biathlon
But if Sleptsova did not suffer much from this decision, her cancelled results at that time were not too serious, then Ustyugov suffered. Now he, like Shipulin, Malyshko and Volkov, is no longer the Olympic champion in Sochi.
It seems like everything was decided back in 2020. Too often, our athletes received negative responses from the CAS and there was little chance that the outcome would be different.
Even Emil Hegle Svendsen, who now won bronze in the Sochi relay, thought the matter was over long ago.
“This is not how you want to receive awards, but a medal is a medal. Once again. To be honest, I thought everything was decided a few years ago,” Svendsen told TV2.
There is a feeling that all of us, until the last moment, had a glimmer of hope for a positive decision and the preservation of that heroically won medal. But, unfortunately, this did not happen.
