Winter sports: After pre-selection: Russia can hope for a big team in Pyeongchang

Russia can hope to participate in the Olympic Winter Games in Pyeongchang (9. till 25. In spite of the doping scandal with an almost as large group of athletes as four years ago in Sochi.

According to a report by the IOC on Friday evening, the Invitation Review Panel and the OAR Implementation Group have so far reduced the list of potential starters flying a neutral flag from 500 to 389 “clean” candidates.

The industry service insidethegames therefore expects about 200 Russian starters in South Korea in view of the quota places achieved so far. 214 Russian athletes took part in the home games in Sochi.

Other athletes could be removed from the list if conditions such as further doping tests and follow-up examinations are not met. According to the IOC, 80 percent of the pool’s athletes did not participate in the 2014 Winter Games. In addition, 51 trainers and ten medical staff were also sorted out.

However, the exact selection criteria of the panel among the athletes remain unclear. The IOC merely stated that none of the 43 athletes banned from the Olympic Games for the rest of their lives belonged to the pre-selection and that none of the candidates had ever been guilty of doping offences.

At the beginning of December, the IOC had excluded the Russian Olympic Committee from the Winter Games because of systematic doping, but under certain conditions offered clean Russian athletes the prospect of a start under a neutral flag.

The “Invitation Review Panel”, chaired by the former French Minister of Sport, Valerie Fourneyron, has the task of defining the list of potential athletes. The Commission also includes Richard Budgett, Medical Director of the IOC, and German WADA Chief Investigator Günter Younger.

The IOC also announced that it had written a letter to the Russian Olympic Committee “to make it clear that Mr. Grigory Rodchenkov deserves protection as a whistleblower”. This is currently guaranteed by the FBI’s witness protection program. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has sent a letter to the Ministry of Sport.

The former head of the Moscow doping laboratory, who had contributed significantly to the discovery of Russia’s government-controlled doping system, fears for his life after his revelations.