Russia loses new Olympic gold in Sochi

YESTERDAY tonight, all the results from 2014 to the Russian biathlon hero Yevgeny Ustyugov were deleted. He was then convicted of fraud with his blood values ​​by the Sports Arbitration Court (CAS). This means that the Russians lose the Olympic gold from the boys’ biathlon relay in Sochi, and much more importantly:

• That Russia is no longer the best nation in the 2014 Winter Olympics.

That in itself is a prestige defeat for Vladimir Putin. These were the Russian President’s highly personal toys. Under Putin’s leadership, the great power brought in foreign stars and granted them Russian citizenship to ensure that the host nation came highest on the medal statistics.

That first place disappeared last night.

FINALLY It did not help that the Russian authorities organized a secret doping program that included several hundred top athletes to get maximum results at home.

In February 2014, all this cheating barely beat Norway in the Olympic summary, but the fraud was discovered.

In the following years, there has been an international court settlement that has involved as many as 46 of the Russian medal winners. The medals have changed owners several times along the way, before the latest verdict against Usjugov became known late last night.

Now the result is final. Russia loses the relay gold. Germany will be the new Olympic champion ahead of Austria, while the Norwegian team will be moved from the disappointing fourth place to bronze.

This means that Norway with 11 gold, 5 silver and 11 bronze will stand as the winner of the Winter Olympics 2014 right in front of a revealed and humiliated Russia that stopped at 10 gold.

THE will of course not be a big Norwegian celebration of such a victory. The scandalous winter games in Sochi have really only given losers. The Russian fraud there was so gross that the roll-out of cheating has only eroded confidence in all top sports.

At the same time, the aftermath has divided most sports, forcing the world to settle with Russian elite sports:

• In a few weeks, the appeal case will start in CAS, where the Russians are desperately trying to get a four-year ban from all international championships lifted.

They are unlikely to make it. In the future, the European Championships, the World Cup and the Olympics will probably take place without Russia as a nation.

IN such exclusion is politically unfortunate. The more isolated the Russians feel, the more global instability.

Also in the prestigious case of Yevgeny Ustyugov, they have felt opposed. After the International Biathlon Federation last February convicted Uzhugov of cheating based on data released by the famous doping laboratory in Moscow, Russian authorities have thrown themselves into the work of getting the verdict overturned.

This spring, Vladimir Putin himself came to the well-known Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology in Moscow to attend a meeting in support of Ustyugov. The background was that this institute presented a research report which established that the variations in the biathlete’s blood pass were due to natural genetic conditions in the biathlete’s family:

– It turned out that the abnormally high blood values ​​came from particularly rare mutations in the family, stated Alexander Makarov, director of the department, after researching Ustjugov’s family.

This research was praised by Putin:

– Thank you for helping our athletes. This help comes at the right time, the President of Russia.

– I think this argument will be very important, he added.

Just to be disappointed last night.

WHAT the judges of the CAS have emphasized, we do not yet know. The premise of the verdict is not public, but the verdict is devastating:

• All of Yevgeny Ustyugov’s results from 2010 to 2014 have been deleted due to irregularities in his blood passport.

Such irregularities do not usually result in high blood levels per se. These values ​​vary from athlete to athlete, and can be extremely high for natural reasons. The most special case was the Finnish ski king Eero Mäntyranta.

When the researchers examined 95 members of the Finn’s family, they found that 29 of them were naturally doped with red blood cells that were 65 percent above normal. As a 53-year-old, Eero Mäntyranta had a blood value of 23.6; soaring above the ordinary for top endurance athletes.

SO was then also Mäntyranta red flame in the face throughout life. That face color reflects with us other occasional shame.

The Russians have not arrived there yet. In the nearly five years since the Sochi scam was uncovered, Russian authorities have never taken full responsibility for what happened. The Russian biathletes have also gone from scandal to scandal with a national federation that has never wanted to make up for itself.

Instead, the manipulation has just continued. It is ironic that the new fraud of old samples from the Moscow laboratory is about to exclude the country from all major international championships.

Now that humiliation will take place right after Russia lost its overall winner in its own Winter Olympics due to Yevgeny Ustyugov’s cheating.

It is embarrassing for both the country and Vladimir Putin.