Two, Men

The first half of the 2013-14 World Cup season, which consisted of an extended sweep of North American tracks, had been dominated by the US number one sled, piloted by Steve Holcomb but his success waned as the circuit reached Europe and the Swiss sled of 3-time Olympic medallist Beat Hefti emerged as the in-form team. By contrast, the top Russian sled with Aleksandr Zubkov at the helm had a consistent but not spectacular season but their entire efforts for the year were totally concentrated on the Sochi Games.

Zubkov and his crewmate, professional arm wrestling champion Aleksey Voyevoda, used their extensive knowledge of the Olympic track to great advantage. The pairing set a track record on their 1st run to open up a lead that was expanded on in every subsequent run. This was achieved despite strong rumours that the two men had an antagonistic relationship. After bronze medals in 2006 and 2010, Hefti’s Swiss sled moved up to silver in 2014 with Holcomb’s US sled narrowly beating off the challenge of the 2nd Russian sled to claim the bronze medal. This was the first American medal in the event for 62 years.

A major talking point was the lack of performance of the German crews. Germany had placed a crew on the podium on every World Championship events in the years since the Vancouver Olympics but 2013-14 had slowly turned into a disaster for them. Francesco Friedrich had been World Champion 12 months earlier but he lost his fight against the technical inadequacies of his equipment and could only scrape a top ten finish. To add salt to the wound German car giant BMW were in partnership with the US team and designed the team’s sleds.

The return of a Jamaican team to the Olympic arena gained much publicity with 46 year old Winston Watts making a comeback after missing the Torino and Vancouver Games.

In May 2016 WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) commissioned a report, the McLaren Report, to look into allegations of systematic Russian doping and a cover-up to avoid positives at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. The report was released in two parts, in July and December 2016, and confirmed the allegations. In 2017 the IOC formed a commission to investigate this, headed by IOC Member Denis Oswald, and usually referred to as the Oswald Commission. In late October 2017 the Oswald Commission began to release its findings.

All eight members of the Russian bobsleigh teams, which originally finished first and fourth in this event were disqualified in November-December 2017. Appeals were made immediately to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), but were denied and the Russian teams remained disqualified and the medals were re-allocated.

A special committee of the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation (IBSF) was then charged with investigating these findings, but refused to acknowledge the disqualifications and allowed all the sliders to continue competing. The IOC was not happy with that ruling and the Executive Committee of the IBSF then appealed to the CAS, against its own sub-committee, to have that ruling overturned.