Four, Men

The early part of the 2013-14 World Cup season had been a triumph for the “Night Train”, the US #1 sled piloted by reigning Olympic champion Steve Holcomb but, as the circuit decamped to Europe after the Christmas and New Year break, the European sleds matched and exceeded the performances of the Americans and both Latvian and German sleds recorded victories.

Although the Russians had been having a consistent rather than spectacular season, the prevailing suspicion was that they would be the team to beat at Sochi after having seemingly sacrificed results at the World Cup in favour of preparation on the Olympic track.

Aleksandr Zubkov and the Russia #1 sled lived up to their billing by leading from start to finish although they were pressured on the final run by the Latvian crew who recovered from a mediocre first run to come within a tenth of a second of the title. Holcomb’s US sled added a bronze to the gold he had won in Vancouver as he finished just .03 ahead of the 2nd Russian crew in a result that matched that of the two-man event in Sochi. Hampered by design problems, Maximilian Arndt’s World Champion German crew could finish no better than sixth.

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 partially 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.