Biathlete Martin Fourcade, already the most titled Frenchman at the Olympic Games, will recover a sixth Olympic title after the final conviction for doping Russian Evgeny Ustyugov, the CIO announced on Friday.
Now winner of the Mass Start of the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver, a race which had revealed him at just 22 years old, he “will have the opportunity” to receive his gold medal during the 2026 Olympic Games in Milan-Cortina, the President of the Olympic body Kirsty Coventry told the press.
The decision of the Executive Commission of the Olympic body, reunited in Milan, was expected since the rejection last May of the final appeal of Evgeny Ustyugov against his disqualification for doping, due to anomalies on his organic passport.
A ceremony dedicated to Milan in 2026
As early as October 2020, the Russian had been deprived of all its results obtained between 2010 and 2014, including the gold medal of the Mass Start of the Vancouver Olympic Games won in front of the French, revealed at 22 years without ever being mounted on a world cup podium before.
Sixteen years later, in the meantime, a legend of biathlon and French sport, member of the IOC since 2022, Martin Fourcade will receive this sixth title which could have been the first during a dedicated ceremony.
The Pyrenean has five other Olympic gold medals (individual and prosecution in 2014, pursuit, mass start and mixed relay in 2018), as well as the Mass-Start des Olys 2014 in Sochi. Martin Fourcade also won the general classification of the World Cup, a record, and 28 world medals including 13 titles, before retiring in March 2020, seven times.
