Four years after more than 200 athletes competed at the 2022 Beijing Winter Games, just over a dozen Russian athletes have been permitted to compete at the Milan Cortina Olympics.

The athletes can’t compete for their home country. Instead, they are competing under the Individual Neutral Atheletes delegation, or AIN (IOC country code after the French name Athlètes Individuels Neutres). Olympics fans may recognize the name from the Paris Games.

Both Russia and Belarus were banned from competing in the 2024 Paris Olympics by the International Olympic Committee due to the nations’ involvement in the war in Ukraine.

A total of 13 Russian athletes and seven from Belarus were approved to compete in the 2026 Games. The Russians and Belarusians will not have their national identity of team colors, flag or anthem and cannot take part in the opening ceremony athlete parades.

Neutral status can be approved by the International Olympic Committee for athletes in individual sports who were judged to have not actively supported their countries’ war on Ukraine, and who are not contracted to the military or state security agencies.

Two Russian athletes and one Belarusian have been invited to compete in Alpine skiing at the Olympics though none is a realistic medal contender.

Yulia Pleshkova has started three World Cup three races this season — with a best result of 40th in a downhill — and is due to compete later this week in Crans-Montana, Switzerland.

Simon Efimov and Maria Shkanova of Belarus compete in slalom though neither has qualified for a second run in a World Cup race this month.

They could try to qualify for the Olympics after a Dec. 2 ruling at the Court of Arbitration for Sport overturned a blanket ban by the International Ski and Snowboard Federation imposed within days of the war in Ukraine intensifying in February 2022.

DESC: Figure skater Mariah Bell shared 4 take aways from Day 1 of Team USA’s figure skating team event.

Luge athletes

In luge, the IOC said it invited Russians Daria Olesik and Pavel Repilov to compete at the sliding track in Cortina.

Olesik was the first Russian to start a luge World Cup race in almost four years when she competed last month at Lake Placid, New York.

Repilov was a silver medalist in boy’s singles at the 2020 Lausanne Winter Youth Olympics.

Russian medal contenders

The best Russian medal prospects at the Olympics are figure skaters Adeliia Petrosian and Petr Gumennik.

Russia is still excluded, as it was at the 2024 Paris Summer Games, from team sports like ice hockey.

At the 2022 Beijing Olympics, Russian athletes won 32 medals including five gold competing at ROC — the acronym for Russian Olympic Committee, which was a neutral title as punishment in the long-running scandal of state doping.

In Italy next month, the athletes will be known as AIN, the French acronym for Individual Neutral Athletes.

Watch the Olympic rings fly through the sky to come together at the 2026 Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony.