Question: What if they don’t wanna? Or have already sold the medal to a collector? Is there any international legal mechanism that can send IOC ninjas out to retrieve the medals?
WAG I’d imagine their harshest threat would be to DQ them from future Olympics until the medals are returned or otherwise accounted for.
I’m not sure why you’d need any mechanism of enforcement. You’re stripped of the result regardless. If you want to keep a meaningless tainted disc of metal and never compete again, you could hang on to it, I guess.
Supposedly they’re worth about $450 US, per their weight in silver.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/31/sport/olympic-medals-value-explainer-scli-intl/index.html
A gold medal is worth about $800, while a bronze medal (which is mostly copper) is about $5.
That’s just if you melt them down. As a collector’s item, it might be far more valuable.
So, the accomplishment is now moot per the IOC. Trying to get the physical medal back seems a bit petty compared to how much money is involved in making an Olympic Games event happen. But they’re not completely worthless. 
They’re in good company.
Yeah, and the IOC could sue for their return or their cost, but it’s pretty impossible to force the turnover of something readily hidden or given away. Maybe someday those medals will be worth a little more than a typical Olympic Silver medal because of their backstory and rarity. But I have a feeling there will be many more such medals in the future.
ETA: I see above they are not so rare now either, though maybe most of them were physically returned.
As collector’s items the fact that they should have been handed back may make them even more valuable
I was thinking that as well…
From the athlete’s perspective, it has to be a big enough payoff to justify ending their entire career, and ending it in disgrace. The only circumstance I can imagine would be an athlete who is banned for life or was about to retire anyway and disputes the decision. Or maybe conceivably if the athlete’s national federation also dispute and defy the decision, in which case perhaps the athlete could continue to compete domestically.
From the IOC’s perspective, if they get it back they are not going to sell it to a collector, so the value of the metal is worth maybe an hour of a lawyer’s time. I can’t see why they would really care or have any incentive to do anything about it. Obviously changing the record books and awarding a medal to the new recipient isn’t contingent on getting the stripped physical medal back.
Are they giving the bronze team a set of silvers and the fourth place team a set of bronze medals?
That’s what they typically do, yes. I wonder the IOC asks for the bronze medals back and then regifts them?
Mmmm… DQ…
A toothless threat if any of them have retired/intend to do so before the next Olympics.
