{"id":747704,"date":"2026-02-07T04:16:20","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T04:16:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/747704\/"},"modified":"2026-02-07T04:16:20","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T04:16:20","slug":"russian-athletes-at-the-2026-winter-olympics-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/747704\/","title":{"rendered":"Russian Athletes at the 2026 Winter Olympics, Explained"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russia\u2019s status at the Olympics in recent years has been complicated, to say the least.<\/p>\n

Following the revelation that numerous athletes were involved in a state-sponsored doping scheme<\/a>, in 2018 in Pyeongchang, Russian athletes went by \u201cOlympic Athletes from Russia\u201d instead of Team Russia. At the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and at the Beijing Olympics in 2022, that name changed to the \u201cRussian Olympic Committee.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, Team Russia (or \u201cOlympic Athletes from Russia\u201d or \u201cRussian Olympic Committee\u201d) was formally banned from the 2024 Paris Olympics in response to Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine, which took place just days after the Beijing Winter Olympics ended. Team Belarus was also banned, for the country\u2019s support of the Russian invasion.<\/p>\n

Even though their countries were banned, 32 Russian and Belarusian athletes ended up competing in Paris<\/a> as \u201cIndividual Neutral Athletes.\u201d Those athletes had to pass background checks through the Individual Neutral Athlete Eligibility Review Panel (AINERP)<\/a> to ensure they did not actively support the Russian invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n

The same ban will hold for the 2026 Milan-Cortina Olympics; only approved athletes from Russia and Belarus will compete as \u201cIndividual Neutral Athletes\u201d instead of representing Russia. (They will be known as \u201cAINs,\u201d the French acronym for Individual Neutral Athletes.) Just 13 athletes from Russia and seven from Belarus<\/a> will compete. Among those are Russian figure skaters Adeliia Petrosian, 18, and Petr Gumennik, 23, who are widely considered the best chances at a Russian athlete earning a medal this winter.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole scheme that you have to compete under a neutral flag, can\u2019t have the colours of your country, no national anthem\u2014they all originally came from 2016,\u201d Dr. Richard McLaren, who authored the report on state-sanctioned doping in Russia, told The Athletic<\/a>. After the invasion of Ukraine, \u201cthe IOC wanted a backdoor way out of that problem, so they allowed athletes who could demonstrate they were not involved in supporting Russia to compete as neutral athletes. The athletes don\u2019t want that, but they\u2019d rather be competing in the Olympics regardless, because this could be their only chance to appear.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Headshot<\/p>\n

Emily Burack (she\/her) is the Senior News Editor for Town & Country, where she covers entertainment, celebrities, the royals, and a wide range of other topics. Before joining T&C, she was the deputy managing editor at Hey Alma, a Jewish culture site. Follow her @emburack on Twitter and Instagram.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Russia\u2019s status at the Olympics in recent years has been complicated, to say the least. Following the revelation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":747705,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7655],"tags":[220671,1380,220696,1331,3989,1381,332,220695,220670],"class_list":["post-747704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-russia","tag-collection-2026-winter-olympics","tag-content-type-news","tag-contentid-2c87c36d-e407-488f-a9d6-eb261beedcaf","tag-displaytype-standard-article","tag-hasproduct-true","tag-locale-us","tag-russia","tag-shorttitle-russian-athletes-at-the-2026-winter-olympics","tag-subsection-sporting"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116027417391993299","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=747704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747704\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/747705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=747704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=747704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=747704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}