When Olympic medalists are asked to return their medal, do they actually return it?
How much effort does the Committee take to get it back?
Are further steps taken if the athlete does not comply?
If a medal is returned, what does the Committee do with it then?
I suspect that when an athlete participates in the Olympics, he/she signs a contract, including a clause that the medal is to be returned in the event of cheating. I’ve read that recent Academy Award winners have to agree not to sell the statuette on the open market but instead to give it back to the AMPAS should they need the money.
From what I’ve heard, Academy Award winners have to agree to give the Academy “Right of First Refusal” if they ever want to get rid of their Oscar. Specifically, they must offer to sell the Oscar back to the Academy for $1.
Apparently, this started because some Oscars were being sold on the open market.
Not sure if it’s true, but when Jim Thorpe was stripped of his medals, the story is the second place athletes were promoted to first, but they all refused the medals. Might be glurge, but it’s a good story.
Here’s a similar incident from a few years ago. The story doesn’t mention it but I remember that the reason she stepped over the line was because of some jostling in the pack.
In the documentary :03 from Gold (2002), they actually showed the silver medals that the 1972 USA basketball team refused to accept, held in some vault in Switzerland, I believe. Not quite the same as the IOC demanding their return, but they were medals that they ended up with that were supposed to have been awarded.
I assume the Olympic medals, like many such tokens (e.g. club membership cards, public transport cards etc.) are presented with a clause attached along the lines of they remain the property of the issuer - in this case, the IOC. This would then give the IOC the right to re-claim their property in cases such as these.