He was only joined for a time at the top of the French Olympic pantheon. Martin Fourcade will once again become the most successful Frenchman at the Olympic Games after being overtaken this summer by Teddy Riner, double medalist in Paris in individual and team events, his 4th and 5th titles in total. But the French biathlete will soon move to the next level.
Martin Fourcade will take advantage of the doping conviction of Russian Evgeny Ustyugov to recover a sixth Olympic gold medal. Second in the mass start of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics behind the Russian, the French biathlete is only a few legal decisions away from recovering his title.
An impossible appeal before the Swiss Federal Court
Already declassified in 2020 from all competitions between 2010 and 2014, Evgeny Ustyugov has just seen his first appeal rejected by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which confirmed “anomalies identified in his biological passport (ABP)”. “All competition results obtained by Mr. Ustyugov between January 24, 2010 and his retirement at the end of the 2013/2014 season are invalidated, including associated medals, points and prizes. This includes the results obtained at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, where he won the gold medal in the mass start and the bronze medal in the men’s relay,” indicates the CAS.
Ustyugov can still appeal this decision to the Swiss Federal Court (TSF), but such an appeal is complicated to put in place, with very little hope of results. The Russian has not yet made his decision. Once he has abandoned or exhausted all possible appeals, Martin Fourcade will see his record turned upside down. The mass start in Vancouver in 2010 will become his first Olympic title before the individual and pursuit in Sochi in 2014, then the pursuit, mass start and mixed relay in Pyeongchang in 2018. He will then be six-time Olympic champion, the only one in the history of French sport.
