This week the IOC disqualified 12 more Russian Winter Olympians from the Sochi 2014 Games – Aleksey Voyevoda (BOB) on Monday, 18 December, and then yesterday, 11 more athletes were disqualified. This brings to 43 the number of Russians disqualified from Sochi since 1 November by the Oswald Commission findings. In all, 44 Russians have been disqualified from Sochi as Aleksandr Loginov (BIA) was DQed back in 2014.

Sonny and Cher once sang “The Beat Goes On” and Emerson, Lake & Palmer implored us to “Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends.” But we think this ends it. The IOC examined 46 cases which was the number they said they had on their docket – exonerating 3 athletes and disqualifying 43. So, hopefully, we can summarize the “final” results of the medal standings from Sochi.

Here are the original medal standings from Sochi, again listing the NOC ranks by the US method (Medals-Gold-Silver-Bronze) and the European/International method (Gold-Silver-Bronze).

And here is what the medals and standings look like today. The Russians have lost 4 gold medals, 8 silver, and 1 bronze medal, and dropped from 1^st in the medal standings (both systems), to either 4^th or 5^th, depending on the system you favor.

Now, everyone asks who will get the re-allocated medals. As noted in previous posts, medal re-allocations are not automatic and take some time as the appeal goes thru CAS (it is virtually always denied) and then the IOC makes a decision about upgrades. In a perfect world, where everyone is automatically upgraded to the next higher position, after a disqualification, this is what the medal tables would look like.

Note that Russia actually goes up 1 gold medal and loses 1 bronze medal from the standings as of 23 December 2017. Why is that? Well, in the men’s 50 km cross-country, the gold and silver medalists, Aleksandr Legkov and Maksim Vylegzhanin, were disqualified. The bronze medalist was another Russian, Ilya Chernousov, as they originally had a medal sweep. So if medal upgrades are done automatically, Chernousov would actually move up from a bronze medal to a gold medal, with silver going to original 4^th-place finisher Martin Johnsrud Sundby (NOR) and bronze going to original 5^th-place finisher Sergey Dolidovich (BLR).

But that ain’t gonna happen which is why the “perfect re-allocation” is a bit of specious reasoning. One cannot imagine the IOC upgrading another Russian, Chernousov, to the gold medal, given the Russian problems in Sochi, and if they do not do that, then Sundby and Dolidovich cannot move up onto the podium.

To further complicate matters, Sundby had a doping violation in January for salbutamol – the asthma inhaler that recently nabbed Chris Froome – so it’s unlikely he would be advanced either. There have also been rumors that Chernousov was a whistleblower on Legkov and Vylegzhanin to move up in the medals, which has not been taken kindly.

Here are the sports in which the Russians have lost their medals:

My compadre, @OlympicStatman noted that Russia had now had 44 DQs from Sochi 2014, the most ever for a single Olympics. Here are the all-time records for most DQs at a single Olympics by NOC (top 10):

Note that the top 9 places are from the Sochi 2014 Oswald Commission findings and the re-testing of samples from 2008 and 2012, with the only other one (10^th) the Austrian cross-country ski DQs from Torino in 2006.

To date, since the first disqualification in 1968, there have been 445 ADRVs (anti-doping rule violations) at the Olympics, with 72 different countries having at least 1. Here are the all-time ADRVs by NOC, listing the 35 NOCs with at least 3 violations. Some of these are not DQs but simply reprimands, and a few occurred in pre-Games testing so the athlete did not actually start at that Olympics.

We think, and we hope, that this it for now. This has required us to make 239 major edits to the Olympic results from 2008-14, editing almost 12,000 results, and it has not been an easy task. It’s not finished yet, as there will be medal upgrades to come but for now we are up-to-date, and we think this is done until after PyeongChang.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy Festivus, Happy New Year – and to all a Good Night.

It’s become somewhat of a tradition here at Olympstats to publish a post at this time of the year with a tenuous link to the festive season. This year it takes the form of our version of the popular song “The Twelve Days of Christmas” and we’ll try to cram in as many obscure links, bad puns and weak jokes as we can manage.

So let’s take you on a journey through the lyrics of the song….

On the First day of Christmas my true love sent to me a Partridge in a Pear Tree.

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Links to trees we can find, Cuban runner Felix Carvajal interrupted the 1904 marathon to pick from an apple tree and paid the price with a case of stomach cramps while the German government rewarded every Olympic champion with a sapling of an oak tree in 1936, but pear trees seem to be impossible to link.

So in that case we rely on A. Partridge in the pairs.  Now it’s fair to say Alex rarely competed in pairs rowing after his career as a junior ended and his Olympic medals came as a member of a British eight in 2008 and 2012 but hey, it’s Christmas, so we’re relying on it being the season of good will here. Partridge won silver and bronze medals and had the unusual distinction of being first over the line in 2004 despite having never left England. He lost a place in Athens after suffering a collapsed lung in a race in Lucerne but his team-mates made sure his efforts were recognised by painting his name on the bow of his boat.

On the Second day of Christmas my true love sent to me two Turtle Doves

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We can find doves fairly easily. It can take us from British golfer William Dove in 1900 to Ashley Dove from South African baseball a century later and, if you include nicknames there’s even a turtle lurking in the shape of beach volleyball’s Misty May-Treanor.  Instead we’ll go down a more esoteric path and remember the Olympic tradition of releasing doves of peace during the opening ceremony and, specifically, why it came to an end. The year was 1988 and the doves had been released as they had been for decades with little more than increased laundry bills to mark the fact.  This time however the birds decided that rather than take the shortest route of the stadium they would wait a while and some even perched on the edge of the as yet unlit Olympic cauldron. Unfortunately for them they were still there when the time came to light the flame and were incinerated in an instant. There were no doves present in 1992 or any subsequent celebration except in the symbolic form of biodegradable paper doves

On the Third day of Christmas my true love sent to me three French Hens

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You may think of aquatics here but even we draw the line at swimming poule puns so we’ll go the obvious this time. There doesn’t seem to be a French connection but Jennifer Hens competed for Australia in the air rifle event at the Rio Olympics. Sadly for her she could only finish 39^th of the 51 competitors which probably left her in a foul mood. Equally René Lasserre, the French rugby player, was given the nickname “Poulet” which translates as chicken.

On the Fourth day of Christmas my true love sent to me four Calling Birds

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Calling birds is actually a fairly recent addition to the lyrics. Originally it was Colley birds, an English dialect word for the colour black. If we favour that then Gambian sprinter Saruba Colley becomes our prime suspect. Realistically though we need a Bird calling the shots so who better than Boston Celtics legend Larry Bird? Bird was still a high school student in 1976 and had to wait until NBA players were allowed to take part before making his Olympic debut in 1992.

On the Fifth day of Christmas my true love sent to me five Gold Rings

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So this one is easy right? Five rings on the Olympic flag – an unmistakeable sign of the Olympic movement since Baron de Coubertin designed it in 1912. According to him “the six colours [including the flag’s white background] combined in this way reproduce the colours of every country without exception. The blue and yellow of Sweden, the blue and white of Greece, the tricolour flags of France, England, the United States, Germany, Belgium, Italy and Hungary, and the yellow and red of Spain are included, as are the innovative flags of Brazil and Australia, and those of ancient Japan and modern China. This, truly, is an international emblem.”

Alternatively if you want an actual gold ring you look to “Bullet Bob” Hayes, the only man to win an Olympic gold medal and a gold Superbowl ring.

On the Sixth day of Christmas my true love sent to me six Geese a-Laying

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Famously Olympic legend Emil Zatopek used to race his family’s geese on his way from school as a youngster leading his mother to complain how hard it was to fatten the birds when Emil would accidentally include them in his training regime.

Three geese have actually competed at Olympic level in their youth. Well, sort of. A young goose is called a gosling and three of that name have appeared at the Games. William Gosling was a member of the victorious football team in 1900 and later became the High Sheriff of Essex, Bermudan diver Frank Gosling (nicknamed Goose) competed in 1948 and 1952 after serving a pilot guarding naval convoys to Russia during WW2 and more recently New Zealand hockey player Dion Gosling appeared in Athens.

And, for completeness, I have to point that badminton shuttlecocks have traditionally been made from goose feathers and that a flock of geese featured at part of the opening of London 2012.

On the Seventh day of Christmas my true love sent to me seven Swans a-Swimming

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Once Lianna Swan swam at the Rio Olympics there could be no other choice here. Born to an English father and a Pakistani mother she had the good sense to finish in 7^th place in her heat of the 50m freestyle so that she would literally be a swan a-swimming to seventh.  The Swan sisters who competed for Brazil in sailing probably wouldn’t be as happy to find themselves swimming and neither would those Olympian members of Australia’s Swan River Rowing Club.  If multiple gold medal winning cross country skier Gunde Svan found himself swimming then it’s fair to guess that climate change is doing some strange things to the Winter Olympics.

On the Eighth day of Christmas my true love sent to me eight Maids a-Milking

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From an easy choice to a much more difficult pick.  American wrestling gold medallist Rulon Gardner grew up on a Minnesota dairy farm but he’d probably not thank you for calling him “a maid a-milking”.  New Zealand equestrian star Mark Todd sold most of his herd of dairy cattle to finance his successes at the 1984 Games and 1992 gold medallist Sally Gunnell began her hurdling career by jumping hay bales at her family’s dairy farm. If you look beyond the milk references you can find Tilly van der Made, a Dutch runner of the 1960s.

On the Ninth day of Christmas my true love sent to me nine Ladies Dancing

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Believe it or not there is a crossover between Olympic sports and ballet.  Sophie Hichon won a bronze medal in the women’s hammer at the Rio Olympics after studying ballet for a decade and the same can be said of Canadian skeleton slider Sarah Reid.  Ski Ballet (later acroski) was a demonstration sport a quarter of a century ago but its chances of becoming a full medal sport have faded dramatically since as the popularity of the event declined so dramatically that official competitions ended in 2000. More recently ballroom dancing (in its guise as dancesport) has lobbied for inclusion.

On the Tenth day of Christmas my true love sent to me ten Lords a-Leaping

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Lord’s cricket ground hosted the archery events in 2012 and the Italian men’s certainly celebrated their gold medal win with a lot of leaping about.  This time we can actually find ten Lords. We have US diver Alice Lord, her compatriots Harvey (track and field) and Arthur (golf), Australians in the form of Max (basketball), Ron (football) and Karen (swimming), athlete Fred and swimmer Bob from Great Britain, South African rower David and Swedish swimmer Torsten.

But that only adds up to nine you say? So let’s add an actual titled Lord to the list. Lord Burghley who won the 400m hurdles title at the 1928 Olympics and then spent nearly half a century as a true “Lord of the Rings” as a member of the IOC.

On the Eleventh day of Christmas my true love sent to me eleven Pipers Piping

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With a generous interpretation of the rules you can actually get to eleven pipers at the Olympic Games. Six people with that surname have competed at the Games – the most successful by far being the Canadian ice hockey player Cherie Piper with three gold medals. Piper’s team won 15 out of 15 games during her Olympic career and scored ten goals for every one conceded.

So where do we find the extra five pipers?  Strangely the answer comes from 1924 in Paris. For some reason the British team were escorted during the opening ceremony by five kilted military bagpipe players. What the French made of it is not recorded.

On the Twelfth day of Christmas my true love sent to me twelve Drummers Drumming

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So we’ve reached the end of our not very serious journey  and… we’ve reached a dead end. No Olympians called Drum, Drumm or Drummer. No Snares, no one called Hi-Hat or Cymbals. A few called Bass but that seems tenuous even for us. So instead we’ll retreat once more to the comfort of Olympic ceremonies. In Beijing 2008 drummers marked the start of the opening ceremony (though we’ll have their word for the exact number – they’re really wasn’t time to count) with a display of traditional Chinese drumming while four years later the deaf percussionist Dame Evelyn Glennie led a mere thousand drummers during the section based on the Industrial Revolution.

So there we are – we’ve reached the end of our circuitous journey and, if we’ve cheated a little at times, please forgive us. It is Christmas after all…

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Merry Christmas and a Happy New Olympic Year of 2018 from all at Olympstats.com.

 

Here is the complete list of the 105 Russians that have had ADRVs (adverse doping rule violations) at the Olympics. Not all were for documented PED usage, as several were for biological passport offenses (BPOs), and some of the drug offenses were not announced.

There are 64 women and 41 men.

Here is the breakdown by year and season:

And here is the breakdown by sport:

There are likely still more to come. This is a huge number of doping positives for a nation that did not run a state-supported doping system, as Russian officials have insisted is the truth.

So Russia is threatening a potential Olympic Boycott if they are severely disciplined for doping transgressions at Sochi 2014. If required to compete as neutrals or under the Olympic Flag and Olympic Anthem, it is possible they will elect to boycott PyeongChang entirely.

There has not been an Olympic Boycott since the 1988 Seoul Olympics, also in Korea. That year, 6 nations elected not to compete, led by DPR Korea (North Korea), for obvious reasons. They were joined by Albania, Cuba, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, and The Seychelles, which led to then IOC Vice-President Dick Pound to utter one of his more memorable lines, “The Seychelles? Hell, it’s only a country at low tide anyway.”

The first Olympic Boycott occurred in 1952 when Chinese Taipei refused to compete at Helsinki in protest of mainland China being allowed to compete. Chinese Taipei was the only nation that boycotted Helsinki, but the China Problem would cause problems for the IOC until it was titularly solved in 1980 after negotiations by Lord Killanin.

In 1956 at Melbourne, six nations boycotted over two separate political / military actions. On 29 October Israel invaded Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, causing Egypt, Lebanon, and Iraq to withdraw from the Olympics in protest. On 4 November 1956 Soviet tanks invaded Budapest to put down an uprising there, with the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland withdrawing from Melbourne in protests. Hungary competed in Melbourne, although they likely had little choice, but scores of Hungarian athletes defected, many remaining in Australia, but also a number emigrating to the United States. Switzerland technically still competed at the 1956 Olympics, because they had already had athletes at the 1956 Equestrian Olympics held in Stockholm in June 1956.

There was a small boycott of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and it was due to a complex situation. In the summer of 1962, Jakarta hosted the Asian Games, but it refused to issue visas to athletes from Taiwan and Israel, for which, the IOC suspended the Indonesian NOC. In response Indonesian President Sukarno held an international multi-sport event in Jakarta in 1963 – called the Games of the New Emerging Forces, usually known as GANEFO. China competed at GANEFO, as did DPR Korea (North), and North Vietnam. Unfortunately, none of those nations were recognized by the athletics (IAAF) or swimming (FINA) federations. In response any athletes from Indonesia or North Korea who competed at GANEFO were banned by those federations from competing at Tokyo (China was not a recognized NOC at the time and could not compete). In retribution, Indonesia and North Korea both boycotted the Tokyo Olympics. There was one major loss from that, as by 1964 the North Korean runner Sin Kim-Dan had broken the world records in the 400 and 800 metres, although they were not recognized by the IAAF, and could have been favored for gold medals in those events, if allowed to compete.

There was no Olympic Boycott in 1968 or 1972, although those Games were hardly without problems.  In 1976 26 African nations elected not to compete in protest of the the New Zealand All-Blacks rugby squad playing on a tour of South Africa. South Africa was banned from most international sport at the time because of apartheid, and the African nations wanted New Zealand banned from the 1976 Olympics. The IOC pointed out that they had no jurisdiction over rugby football as a sport and refused to do so, and the African nations walked. For athletics fans, this prevented the big match-up they were anticipating between New Zealand’s John Walker and Tanzania’s Filbert Bayi in the 1,500 metres, which Walker went on to win in Bayi’s absence.

Chinese Taipei also boycotted the 1976 Olympics. This occurred when Canada at first refused to allow them to enter the country, as the Canadian government did not recognize the island nation.  This was in direct violation of the contract they had signed as the host nation to admit all eligible nations in honoring the Olympic Charter.  The Canadians acquiesced and allowed the Taiwanese to compete, but refused to allow them to do so under the title of the Republic of China, their official national name.  Several other countries protested and threatened withdrawal, notably the United States, if the Taiwanese athletes were not allowed to compete.  However, these protests were short-lived and the IOC finally gave in to the Canadian government.  Chinese Taipei watched the Olympics from afar, if at all.

The largest known Olympic Boycott occurred in 1980, when the United States government led a boycott of the 1980 Moskva Olympics after the December 1979 invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union. President Jimmy Carter announced in early January that the United States would not compete if Soviet troops did not withdraw by 20 February 1980. They did not. US Secretary of State Cyrus Vance addressed the IOC Session at Lake Placid in February to announce the US Boycott, which greatly angered the IOC Members. With pressure from the US government, eventually 65 nations did not compete at the 1980 Moskva Olympics. It is actually difficult to say how many actually boycotted as various reasons are given for their absence, but suffice to say that 65 IOC member nations decided not to compete in Moskva.

And 1980 led to the Soviet Union not competing at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, convincing 14 nations under their influence to also not compete. The Soviet’s rationale was that they were not convinced that the USA could guarantee their safety in Los Angeles, but nobody believed their boycott was anything other than retribution for the 1980 US Boycott.

And then came the small 1988 Seoul boycott of 6 nations, since which time there as been no Olympic Boycott. Of note, there has never been a boycott of a Winter Olympics, which could possibly occur in PyeongChang if Russia elects to stay home in anger over doping penalties.

To date, Albania is the Olympic leader in boycotts, having stayed home 4 times (1976, 1980, 1984, 1988), with 3 nations having boycotted 3 times – Egypt, Ethiopia, and DPR Korea. DPR Korea (North) has no qualified athletes for PyeongChang as of 3 December 2017, after failing to enter their figure skating pairs duo in time, so technically they are not boycotting if they do not compete in PyeongChang. The IOC would like them there and there are some negotiations ongoing to see what can be done.

Will Russia compete in PyeongChang? Will North Korea? We await Einstein’s space-time continuum to work its magic and tell us the answer.