Winter Olympics now set to have just 13 Russian athletes and 7 from Belarus competing

Thirteen Russian and seven Belarusian athletes will compete as neutral individuals at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics after IOC invitations. Barred from national symbols, they passed neutrality checks, with Russian figure skaters emerging as the strongest medal contenders

Lausanne: A total of 13 Russian athletes are now set to compete as neutral individuals at the Milan Cortina Olympics after invitations from the IOC were confirmed Tuesday for Alpine skiers and lugers.

Four years ago, the Russian team was more than 200 athletes at the 2022 Beijing Winter Games, which closed four days before Russia’s full military invasion of Ukraine which led to its exclusion from much of international sports.

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Seven Belarusian athletes have now been invited to the Winter Games that open next week on Feb. 6. 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.

Luge athletesIn 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.