Most of Russia’s athletes who are eligible to compete in next year’s Winter Olympics have agreed to participate in South Korea under the neutral Olympic flag, according to Sofya Velikaya, the head of the Russian Olympic Committee's athletes' commission. Velikaya has called on Olympic officials to “respect and understand” the wishes of Russia’s athletes.
Russia will also ask the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to review its decisions to impose lifetime bans on several athletes, in order to avoid a situation where “only the fifth and sixth string team members are invited to the Games, and not the leaders.”
The IOC has banned Russia from fielding a national team in the 2018 Winter Olympics, forbidding all Russian sports officials from attending the Games, though “clean” Russian Olympians will be allowed to participate as “neutral” athletes. The committee also imposed a lifetime ban on former Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko.
The IOC based its ruling on the findings of a commission headed by Denis Oswald, which determined that the Russian government coordinated a doping system that allowed widespread cheating among Russian athletes. The IOC has also stripped Russia of 11 medals won in the 2014 Sochi Olympics, knocking it from first to third place in the overall medal count.
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