Biathlon-Sixteen years on, Fourcade finally tastes sweet Vancouver gold

ANTERSELVA, ITALY, Feb 15 : Sixteen years after coming second to Evgeny Ustyugov in the biathlon 15km mass start at the Vancouver Games, Frenchman Martin Fourcade was finally awarded the gold medal following the disqualification of the Russian for anti-doping violations.

Stripped of his competitive results, Ustyugov's final appeal was rejected by a Swiss court in 2025, resulting in the Frenchman's medal being upgraded from silver to gold, and on Sunday it was finally hung around his neck following the men's Olympic pursuit race at the Milano Cortina Games.

"Sixteen years, it has been a long journey - I never thought a biathlon race could last that long," Fourcade joked to Reuters, his 2010 gold nestling in his pocket. 

"This medal today was not about the emotion from Vancouver. It was about the message we send about the fight for clean sport, the message we send about what the Olympics are - not only a sports competition, but a place where you need to follow some rules, to live together and to be able to share that common space."

The International Biathlon Union announced on Saturday that medals stripped from Ustyugov and his Russian teammates would be re-distributed at the Antholz-Antersselva Biathlon Arena, one of the sport's most famous venues. 

"The reallocation follows the disqualification of all of Evgeny Ustyugov's (RUS) competitive results from 2010-2014 due to anti-doping rule violations based on abnormalities in his Athlete Biological Passport and evidence from the Moscow Laboratory Information Management System," the IBU said in a statement.

For Fourcade, who went on to win two gold medals at the Sochi Games in 2014 and three more in Pyeongchang four years later, the wait was worth it. 

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"It means a