Latvia’s belated win marks the country’s first Winter Olympic gold medals. AFP
Latvian bobsleigh pilot Oskars Melbardis and his team of pushers and brakers on Saturday received their long-delayed medals from the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics, awarded after Russian athletes were found to have engaged in doping.
The ceremony took place during the European Bobsleigh and Skeleton Championships at the Sigulda ice track in central Latvia and featured all members of the four-man crew, who won gold medals, and the two-man team, which won bronze.
“I couldn’t find any other case in history when an Olympic medal was awarded a full six years after winning it. This should be a record onto itself,” Latvian Olympian, coach and sled-builder Janis Skrastins said while offering commentary on the European Championships for Latvian television.
“I’m actually happier and prouder about Melbardis and his team winning Olympic gold than my own cups and medals from the 1980s, because I had to win at a fair game while Melbardis dealt with competitors using illegal substances.”
Russian driver Alexandr Zubkov had originally won gold in both the men’s double and four-man categories at the Olympics in Sochi, Russia, after which he retired and became the head of the Russian Bobsled Federation.
But he was stripped of his medals after the International Olympic Committee uncovered systematic, state-backed doping usage by Russian athletes at various sporting events.
Many final results were declared void as a result and Russian was banned from the 2016 Rio Summer Games, among other competitions.
The Russian Olympic Committee fought the decision in court but exhausted all appeal possibilities last year.
After Zubkov’s disqualification, the 2014 two-man bobsleigh gold went to Switzerland’s Beat Hefti and Alex Baumann, while Americans Steven Holcomb and Steven Langton moved into second place and the Latvian team of Melbardis and Daumants Dreiskens got bronze.
The four-man final results now show the Melbardis team in first place, Holcomb as the runner-up and Britain’s John James Jackson taking bronze.
Melbardis told reporters on Saturday that his team thanks “our fans and families” while Dreiskens said “I can’t keep myself from crying tears of joy”.
Melbardis’s team is the last to receive their Sochi medals. Holcomb was awarded his Olympic silver posthumously last year, after he died from cardiac arrest in 2017 at the age of 37.
Latvia’s belated win marks the country’s first Winter Olympic gold medals, as its athletes never made the podium at games held between the two world wars and later competed for the USSR until 1991, when Latvia regained its independence from the Soviet regime.
