The Oswald Commission was a disciplinary commission of the International Olympic Committee, chaired by IOC member Denis Oswald. It was responsible for investigating and ruling on doping violations by individual Russian athletes at the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi. As of December 2017, the commission banned 43 athletes from the Olympics for life, and retroactively disqualified them from their Sochi Olympic events, 13 medals being stripped. 28 of the 43 athletes later successfully appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport and had their sanctions overturned; and another 11 had their doping rulings confirmed, but had their lifetime bans commuted to bans for only the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang. The IOC banned Russia from competing at Pyeongchang as a result of the scandal, instead inviting 169 individual Russians to compete as "athletes of Russia", competing under the Olympic flag rather than under the Russian flag.
Background
Media attention began growing in December 2014 when German broadcaster ARD aired the documentary "Top Secret Doping: How Russia makes its Winners", alleging the existence of a sophisticated, state-sponsored doping system within the All-Russia Athletic Federation, and comparing it to doping in East Germany. In November 2015, the World Anti-Doping Agency published a report and the International Association of Athletics Federations suspended Russia indefinitely from world track and field events. The United Kingdom Anti-Doping agency later assisted WADA with testing in Russia. In June 2016, they reported that they were unable to fully carry out their work and noted intimidation by armed Federal Security Service agents. After a Russian former lab director made allegations about the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, WADA commissioned an independent investigation led by Richard McLaren. McLaren's investigation found corroborating evidence, concluding in a report published in July 2016 that the Ministry of Sport and the FSB had operated a "state-directed failsafe system" using a "disappearing positive methodology" from "at least late 2011 to August 2015".
Sochi investigation
The IOC established the Disciplinary Commission and the Inquiry Commissions in July 2016, following the publication of the McLaren Report. The IOC took this measure since Prof. McLaren did not have the authority to bring forward Anti-Doping Rule Violation cases against individual athletes. After receiving the results from the final McLaren Report in December 2016, the IOC opened proceedings against the 28 Russian athletes mentioned in the report were stripped off. On November 24, 2017 the IOC imposed life bans on bobsledder Alexandr Zubkov and speed skaterOlga Fatkulina who won a combined 3 medals. Olga Stulneva and Aleksandr Rumyantsev were also disqualified. All their results were wiped from the record, meaning that Russia lost its first place in the medal standings. On November 27, 2017 IOC sanctioned Olga Vilukhina, Yana Romanova, Sergey Chudinov, Alexey Negodaylo, and Dmitry Trunenkov, and stripped Vilyukhina and Romanova of their medals in biathlon. 3 athletes who didn't win medals were sanctioned on November 29, 2017. 2 days later Olga Zaitseva who won silver in biathlon and two other athletes were also disqualified. On December 12, 2017 six Russian ice hockey players were disqualified. Bobsledder Alexey Voyevoda who had been already stripped of his gold medals due to the anti-doping violations committed by his teammates was sanctioned on December 18, 2017. Eleven athletes were banned on December 22, 2017. Among them, silver medalists Albert Demchenko and Tatiana Ivanova who were stripped of their medals.
