The biathlon portion was marred by German biathlete Evi Sachenbacher-Stehle's positive doping test.

Sachenbacher-Stehle had finished fourth in both the mass start and the mixed relay but was disqualified from both events after testing positive for the banned substance methylhexanamine.

On 27 November 2017, Olga Vilukhina and Yana Romanova (both from Russia) were disqualified for doping violations.

[7] On 15 February 2020, the International Biathlon Union announced that because of a doping violation, Evgeny Ustyugov and Russian men's 4 x 7.5km relay team had been disqualified from the 2014 Olympics.

Countries were assigned quotas using a combination of the Nation Cup scores of their top 3 athletes in the individual sprint and relay competitions at the 2012 and 2013 World Championships.