Watch Winter Olympics Biathlon Live TV>>>>>
The 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea are right around the corner! That means it's time to watch sports you might not have seen in four years. To help you feel at least a little more informed—either to impress your friends or fake your way through a conversation with an actual expert—SI will be providing rookie's guides to each of the 15 sports. These will be published daily, Monday through Friday, from December 4-22.No Olympic sport fits better within the seminal action scene of a James Bond movie than biathlon, which blends two brutally simple disciplines into a thrilling race format that makes for one of the most unique spectator experiences of the Winter Games.The one drawback? It’s unlike any race the common American sports fan may be familiar with, so the rules take some getting used to. With a few minutes of prep work, you too can live and die with the drama in all 12 biathlon events on the Olympic schedule.How does biathlon work?Biathlon is the combination of two sports, cross-country skiing and shooting, into one race. Athletes are rewarded for their power and endurance as racers and their composure and accuracy as marksmen. In PyeongChang, a total of 230 athletes will qualify, with a quota of spots awarded to competing nations based on the men’s and women’s IBU World Cup Nations Cup final standings at the end of the 2016-17 season. The U.S. will be sending five men and five women; the highest-ranking nations receive six spots each.In all formats, athletes race around a closed course, stopping at set intervals to hit five targets 50 meters away. For every target missed, the athlete takes on either a distance penalty (one lap around a 150 meter loop, branched off from the larger race course) or a time penalty (one minute added onto his or her total time), depending on the format.
Why is it worth my time?The drama of biathlon as a spectator sport is centered around the shooting range, where the anxiety-inducing knowledge that each missed shot physically lengthens the course for the competitor keeps the crowd on edge.And while cross-country skiing and shooting on their own are difficult enough to master individually, they are uniquely difficult to combine. Go to your local golf course and try to sprint from the tee to the green on the longest hole and then get enough control of your breathing and your body to drain five consecutive eight-foot putts. (Note: Maybe double-check your membership agreement before trying this experiment out.) The best biathletes have a preternatural feel for their own heart rate and stamina, going from maximum cardiovascular exertion to complete internal stillness in a matter of seconds, as they coast into position for the shooting portion of the race.And if you are by chance going to PyeongChang, it’s definitely worth dropping by the Alpensia Biathlon Center to take a race in firsthand. The cheers from the stadium seating at every on-target shot from one of the home country’s biathletes are pretty cool:What are the different formats?There are five race formats at the Olympics that hand out a total of 12 gold medals: five each for men’s and women’s events, and two more in mixed events. A quick primer on each format:The Individual (20km for men, 15 for women) format works like a staggered time trial, where competitors (89 men and 85 women in Sochi) start in 30-second intervals and compete for the best finish time. They go through four rounds of shooting in which they must hit five targets with five bullets, alternating between a prone position and a standing one each round.The Sprint (10km for men, 7.5 for women) features an identical format but exactly half the distance and shooting obligations as the individual format.In the Pursuit format (12.5km for men, 10 km for women), biathletes begin the race separated by their order and time intervals of finish in the sprint, and the first racer to cross the finish line wins. The stakes are particularly high because only the top finishers qualify for the Mass Start.
In the Mass Start (15km for men, 12.5km for women), all contestants start the event at the same time. For congestion reasons, only the 30 fastest racers from the sprint get to participate in the Mass Start.There are also Men’s, Women’s and Mixed Relay events, in which four biathletes—women first, then the men—complete the same course. The Single Mixed Relay, held between teams of one male and one female biathlete that complete two laps in total instead of four, is new to the 2018 Games.What kind of guns are those?Those are .22 caliber small-bore rifles, painted in country colors, and the biathletes have to ski the entire race with them strapped to their backs. This makes for some of the gentler celebratory embraces at the finish line you’ll see in PyeongChang.Who are the favorites?Luckily for you, the novice biathlon fan, your first exposure to the sport doubles as a coronation for the sport’s G.O.A.T. Norway’s Ole Einar Bjoerndalen is the most decorated Winter Olympian ever with 13 total medals, including eight golds. He will be competing in his seventh Games in PyeonChang, trying to add to his record count at age 44. Bjoerndalen rarely misses his mark and has brought an unprecedented level of training to the sport’s highest level, even for his native Norway, which has historically dominated the sport. Frenchman Martin Fourcade grew up watching Bjoerndalen and is now out to equal him, needing just two Games to earn more medals than any other French Winter Olympian. Germany and Russia also have fielded strong teams in recent Olympic cycles.Is the U.S. any good?
Not yet! No American biathlete has ever medaled at the Olympics, and Team USA came away from the 2014 Games in Sochi without a single individual top-10 finish. This cycle’s best hope is 31-year-old Susan Dunklee, who earned a silver medal in the mass start at the 2017 world championships, becoming the first American woman ever to medal at that level. Lowell Bailey, the first athlete to qualify for the 2018 U.S. Olympic Team in any sport, also took gold in the 20-kilometer individual race at this year’s worlds. But in terms of the sport’s developmental infrastructure, the U.S. lags far behind northern European nations like Norway and Russia that are perennial contenders. Team USA’s inclination to find good skiers who can be taught to shoot over a period of several years is a slow-burning process that to date hasn’t done enough to make up the gap between them and the elite nations, whose children grow up on skis.Clare Egan’s transition from NCAA Division III track and field All-American to U.S. Olympic qualifier is now complete.But it won’t be in track and field that she’ll be making her Olympic debut. She’s swapped her running shoes for skis.Egan, 30, of Cape Elizabeth, Maine, qualified for the Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018 as a biathlete with a 35th-place finish in the 10-kilometer pursuit at the IBU World Cup 2 event in Hochfilzen, Austria earlier this month.Egan fought off bad weather conditions with low visibility in Hochfilzen on Dec. 8, with only two penalties during an event where only eight of the 102 finishers shot clean. She was just 1:56.1 off the winning time of three-time Olympic gold medalist Darya Domracheva of Belarus.Up to two women would join Susan Dunklee on the team by the end of the third world cup, which concludes this weekend, with top-30 finishes. Egan missed automatically qualifying that way, but qualified as the highest-placing member of Team USA.Like many U.S. biathletes, she came late to the sport, converting from cross-country skiing in 2013 after she met future U.S. Olympians Hannah Dreissigacker and Dunklee at the Craftsbury Outdoor Training Center in Vermont.They encouraged her to give biathlon a shot. Three more women will join Dunklee and Egan on the team by mid-January.Egan’s athletic career started with running. She won Maine high school state titles in track and field, and had top-20 finishes in Junior Olympic cross country skiing events before attending Wellesley College in Massachusetts, where she earned NCAA Division III track and field All-American honors with a sixth-place finish in the 1,500-meter. She also started the first ski team at Wellesley.Cross-country skiing was a fun sideline activity for Egan, until she used her final year of NCAA eligibility for track and skiing while doing graduate work at the University of New Hampshire.“It’s important to go back to a place where you’ve had a good feeling,” said Dahlmeier, speaking in March 2017 at the Alpensia Biathlon Centre, where she laid down a marker for PyeongChang 2018 by winning the sprint and the pursuit without missing a single shot.The German’s two victories tightened her grip on the IBU World Cup and she made the large crystal globe hers a week later, recording her tenth victory of the season in the pursuit in Kontiolahti (FIN). Dahlmeier also pocketed small crystal globes for the individual and the pursuit, completing a treble that marked her out as her country’s successor to the great Magdalena Neuner, who retired in 2012 after claiming a third overall World Cup title.The German tasted yet more success at the 2017 IBU World Championships in Hochfilzen (AUT), becoming the first biathlete to win five golds at a single worlds. Victorious in the mixed relay, pursuit, women’s relay, individual and mass start races, she was only denied a clean sweep by Gabriela Koukalova of the Czech Republic, who beat her to the line in the sprint.Having won five medals in Oslo-Holmenkollen a year before – a haul that included her maiden individual gold, in the pursuit – Dahlmeier is now the proud owner of 13 world championship medals in total, seven of them gold.“It hasn’t sunk in yet,” she said after collecting her mass start gold in Hochfilzen. “It’s like a dream come true. I try to give my best in every race. The world championships were really great. It’s amazing to win five golds and a silver and it’s also the 11th medal in a row. I wasn’t expecting it.”
Rising star
Born in Garmisch-Partenkirchen on 22 August 1993, the petite Dahlmeier is blessed with exceptional stamina. She took up cross-country skiing at the age of seven, dividing her time with Alpine skiing over the next two years before deciding to devote herself exclusively to biathlon. Dahlmeier scored a number of significant wins in her teenage years, not least at the European Youth Olympic Winter Festival in Liberec (CZE) in 2011, where she won gold in all three races on the card (10km individual, 6km sprint and the mixed relay). She left school that year and joined the national customs service club, which allowed her to focus all her energies on biathlon.The German was 19 when she made her IBU World Cup debut in the 2012/13 season. That same winter, she won three medals at the Junior World Championships in Obertilliach (AUT), in the individual, sprint, and relay events. Her first taste of the Olympics was at Sochi 2014, which she described as a “brilliant” experience, recording a best performance of 13th in the individual.A keen hiker and climber in her free time, Dahlmeier very quickly followed in the tracks of Neuner, the winner of two Olympic gold medals and 12 world championship golds before her retirement at the age of 25. The Garmisch-born biathlete scored her first World Cup win in February 2015, in the sprint at Nové Mesto na Morave (CZE). Building on that success, she won races in all formats before becoming world No.1 at the age of 23, on the back of her outstanding 2016/17 season.Dahlmeier’s power on skis and her accuracy with the rifle make her the perfect anchor in relay races, proved throughout that glorious campaign. Even when she began her leg with a deficit to make up or missed a shot, she always managed to overtake her rivals, ensuring that her team went unbeaten all season. The German also knows when to conserve her energy and chose to sit out the World Cup meet on home snow in Oberhof in early January 2017. That deserved breather did not stop her from winning the crystal globe for the individual, an event in which she went unbeaten all winter.Laura Dahlmeier was unable to compete in the first part of the 2017-2018 World Cup in Östersund because of a cold. But that just gave her more time to get into her stride, starting with a relay victory in Hochfllzen, again skiing the final leg, followed by all the steps of the podium at Le Grand-Bornand (France) from 14 to 16 December, just before the start of the Olympic year: second in the sprint, first in the pursuit and third in the mass start. A build-up leading straight to the Olympic biathlon stadium in Alpensia as of 10 February, where she is set to be one of the stars of these 2018 Winter Games. She will have a chance in all six of her events, and if she shows the same form in the Republic of Korea that she did in 2017, she will be unbeatable.The biathlon, which stems from the Greek word for two contests, is an Olympic sport that combines cross-country skiing and rifle shooting. The contest has its roots in survival skills practiced in the snow-covered forests of Scandinavia, where people hunted on skis with rifles slung over their shoulders. The event made its Olympics debut in 1960 at the Squaw Valley Winter Games. The 1992 Olympics was the first time women were allowed to compete in the biathlon.A biathlon competition consists of a race in which contestants ski through a cross-country trail system, and the total distance is divided into either two or four shooting rounds, half in prone position, the other half standing. Depending on the shooting performance, extra distance or time is added to the contestant's total running distance/time. The contestant with the shortest total time wins.Both men and women take part in the biathlon today, which includes several events as well as mixed relay, which was added at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
The 2018 Winter Olympics is set to take place beginning on Feb. 8. The Games will be held in PyeongChang, South Korea.Russia is a perennial powerhouse in the Winter Olympics, with its athletes routinely hauling in golds, silvers, and bronzes in the biathlon, figure skating, cross-country skiing, and in the more distant past, ice hockey.So what happens now that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has banned the country from the upcoming games in South Korea after an investigation documented a systematic campaign of state-sponsored doping?The decision by the IOC on December 5 to ban Russia came after an investigation by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), testimony by whistle-blowers, and retesting of samples led to dozens of Russian athletes being stripped of medals and banned for doping. Multiple reports have concluded that Russian government and security officials oversaw a covert doping operation for Olympic athletes from at least 2012 to 2015, peaking at the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014.Russian President Vladimir Putin and other officials have all denied any state involvement in the string of doping cases that has led to numerous bans over the past two years, and the committee’s 14-member executive board left open the door that some Russian athletes would be allowed to compete “under strict conditions.”With less than 10 weeks to go before the opening ceremonies take place in Pyeongchang, here is what may happen next.What does the ban mean and whom does it affect?Under the ban, Russian officials are barred from attending the Olympics, the country’s flag won’t be displayed at the opening ceremonies on February 9, and its anthem won’t be played. No matter what happens, the official Olympic records will show Russia with a medal total of zero.It’s less clear, though, what will happen to Russian athletes, many of whom have trained most of their lives for the chance to compete for a gold medal.While they will not be able to compete under the Russian flag, any athlete who can show a history of drug testing outside of the tainted Russian state system and who meets standards determined by an IOC-convened panel may ask to compete under the title of “Olympic Athlete from Russia.”"It must be proven that these athletes have not been implicated in the institutionalized scheme and have been tested as overseen by the panel," WADA President Craig Reedie said. "We are eager to collaborate with other stakeholders in this regard."Such participants will see the Olympic flag, instead of the Russian flag, flown at all official ceremonies, including medal ceremonies, and the Olympic anthem will be played in place of the Russian national anthem.Which sports may be most affected?Russia is a perennial juggernaut in the Winter Olympics.In Sochi, it had the biggest team at 232 members, or 8 percent of all participants, who competed in 15 events. It initially placed first in the international system medals table with 13 gold, 11 silver, and nine bronze, which represented 11 percent of all medals awarded. While it has since been stripped of 11 of those medals because of doping infractions, it was still expected to have one of the strongest teams in South Korea.There are 102 events in the 2018 Winter Olympics, and Russian athletes were expected to be in the medal hunt in about one-third of those, based on recent results.In skiing, Russian athletes were expected to contend in most of the cross-country and biathlon events. According to The New York Times, Russians have accounted for three first-place and four second-place finishes in the most recent top-level international competitions in those disciplines.Russians were also expected to have a strong chance to stand on the podium in ice hockey, figure skating, skeleton, speed skating, and luge. For ice hockey, the ban may have the most devastating effect. Already reeling from a decision by the National Hockey League in North America to not free up the world’s top players for the competition, ice hockey officials are now fearful that the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL), arguably the second-best professional league globally, will react by canceling its planned break during the games to allow players to join their national teams for the Olympics.
Aleksandar Medvedev, a KHL board member, was quoted by TASS as saying in November that “contracted players won’t be able to go anywhere” if the IOC followed through on a Russian ban.If the league made good on Medvedev’s words, and the International Ice Hockey Federation was not able to halt the move, most of the hockey world would be hit hard as well. Canada, Sweden, the United States, Czech Republic, and Finland, who along with Russia comprised the top six gold-medal contenders, were expected to draw heavily on players from the KHL to build their rosters in the absence of NHL stars.What can Russia do?
Russia can appeal the decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and athletes can also take the same route, according to Aleksandar Zhukov, the head of the Russian Olympic Committee.But any appeal would be difficult as the IOC has “a great deal of discretion and control over its own rules, its own processes and the Olympic Games,” said James Bunting, a Canadian lawyer who has been involved in several cases at the CAS.The Kremlin has vowed that the state won't prevent Russian athletes from seeking to participate in Pyeongchang.Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said a priority was "protecting the interests of our athletes."Putin had said that it would be humiliating for Russia to compete without its national symbols, raising the specter of a boycott by the country.But on December 6 the Russian president pledged, "Without any doubt, we will not declare any kind of blockade. We will not block our Olympians from taking part, if any of them wish to take part as individuals."MOSCOW, December 6. /TASS/. The International Biathlon Union (IBU) will convene an extraordinary session on December 10 to discuss decisions of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) regarding Russia’s participation in the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, the IBU announced in its statement on Wednesday.An IOC commission, led by Samuel Schmid, established that Russia allegedly employed a system of manipulations with doping samples collected from national athletes.Based on the commission’s findings, the IOC announced its decision on Tuesday night to suspend the Russian national team from taking part in the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in South Korea’s PyeongChang over multiple doping abuse allegations. The IOC, however, stated that doping-free athletes from Russia could go to the 2018 Olympic Games in the status of neutral athletes.
"The IBU Executive Board will hold an extraordinary meeting on December 10 and will afterwards invite all World Cup teams and athletes for an information meeting, followed by a press conference (exact time to be announced) in Hochfilzen," the IBU said in its statement."After discussing and approving the Schmid Report, the IOC EB (Executive Board) among others took the decision to suspend the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) with immediate effect and decided to invite clean individual Russian athletes to the 2018 Olympic Winter Games in Pyeongchang under strict conditions," according to the IBU statement."These athletes will participate under the name, ‘Olympic Athlete from Russia (OAR)’," the statement said. "They will compete in a uniform bearing this name, under the Olympic Flag. The Olympic Anthem will be played in any ceremony including these athletes."LAUSANNE, Switzerland — Russia’s Olympic team has been barred from the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea. The country’s government officials are forbidden to attend, its flag will not be displayed at the opening ceremony and its anthem will not sound.Any athletes from Russia who receive special dispensation to compete will do so as individuals wearing a neutral uniform, and the official record books will forever show that Russia won zero medals.That was the punishment issued Tuesday to the proud sports juggernaut that has long used the Olympics as a show of global force but was exposed for systematic doping in previously unfathomable ways. The International Olympic Committee, after completing its own prolonged investigations that reiterated what had been known for more than a year, handed Russia penalties for doping so severe they were without precedent in Olympics history.The ruling was the final confirmation that the nation was guilty of executing an extensive state-backed doping program. The scheme was rivaled perhaps only by the notorious program conducted by East Germany throughout the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s.Now the sports world will wait to see how Russia responds. Some Russian officials had threatened to boycott if the I.O.C. delivered such a severe punishment.President Vladimir V. Putin seemed to predict a boycott of the Pyeongchang Games with a defiant dismissal of the doping scandal and a foreign policy in recent years that has centered on the premise that he has rescued Russia from the humiliation inflicted on it by the West after the collapse of the Soviet Union. His spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said no boycott was under discussion before the announcement, however, and the news broke late in the evening in Moscow when an immediate official reaction was unlikely.In barring Russia’s team, Olympic officials left the door open for some Russian athletes. Those with histories of rigorous drug testing may petition for permission to compete in neutral uniforms. A panel appointed by the International Olympic Committee will rule on each athlete’s eligibility.Although it is unknown exactly how many will clear that bar, it is certain that the contingent from Russia will be depleted significantly. Entire sports — such as biathlon and cross-country skiing, in which Russia has excelled and in which its drug violations have been many — could be wiped out completely.Olympic officials made two seemingly significant concessions to Russia:Any of its athletes competing under a neutral flag will be referred to as Olympic Athletes from Russia. That is a departure from how the I.O.C. has handled neutral athletes in the past. For example, athletes from Kuwait, which was barred from the 2016 Summer Games, were identified as Independent Olympic Athletes last year in Rio de Janeiro.Olympics officials said they might lift the ban on Russia in time for the closing ceremony, suggesting the nation’s flag could make a symbolic appearance in the final hours of the Pyeongchang Games.Thomas Bach, president of I.O.C., has said he was perturbed not only by Russia’s widespread cheating but by how it had been accomplished: by corrupting the Olympic laboratory that handled drug testing at the Games, and on orders from Russia’s own Olympic officials.
“This decision should draw a line under this damaging episode,” Mr. Bach said at a news conference, noting that Alexander Zhukov, the president of Russia’s Olympic Committee whom the I.O.C. suspended from its membership Tuesday, had issued an apology — something global regulators have long requested from the nation.In an elaborate overnight operation at the 2014 Sochi Games, a team assembled by Russia’s sports ministry tampered with more than 100 urine samples to conceal evidence of top athletes’ steroid use throughout the course of competition. More than two dozen Russian athletes have been disqualified from the Sochi standings as a result, and Olympic officials are still sorting through the tainted results and rescinding medals.At the coming Games, Mr. Bach said Tuesday, a special medal ceremony will reassign medals to retroactive winners from Sochi. But, in light of legal appeals from many of the Russian athletes who have been disqualified by the I.O.C., it is uncertain if all results from Sochi will be finalized in time.The Russian Olympic Committee was also fined $15 million on Tuesday, money that global officials said will be put toward drug-testing international athletes.The punishment announced Tuesday resembles what antidoping regulators had lobbied for leading up to the 2016 Summer Games, where Russia was allowed to participate but in restricted numbers. It is likely to face a legal appeal from Russia’s Olympic Committee.The decision was announced after top International Olympic Committee officials had met privately with Mr. Zhukov; Vitaly Smirnov, Russia’s former sports minister who was last year appointed Mr. Putin to lead a national antidoping commission to redeem Russia’s standing in global sports; and Evgenia Medvedeva, a two-time world skating champion.“Everyone is talking about how to punish Russia, but no one is talking about how to help Russia,” Mr. Smirnov said, sipping a hot beverage in the lobby of the Lausanne Palace Hotel before delivering his final appeal to officials. “Of course we want our athletes there, and we want the Russian flag and anthem,” he said.That appeal was rejected in light of the conclusions of Samuel Schmid, a former president of Switzerland whom the Olympic committee appointed last year to review the findings of a scathing investigation commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency.The analysis is clear and water-tight,” Mr. Schmid said Tuesday. In a 30-page report, he affirmed the credibility of whistle-blowers and investigators who had followed their leads and evidence.Tuesday’s penalty was in line with what had been advocated by two key whistle-blowers whose accounts upended Russia’s standing in global sports over the last several years and were cited in Mr. Schmid’s report: Grigory Rodchenkov, the chemist who spent 10 years as Russia’s antidoping lab chief and was key to carrying out the cheating schemes in Sochi; and Vitaly Stepanov, a former employee of Russia’s antidoping agency who married a runner for Russia’s national team and was the first to speak publicly about the nation’s institutionalized cheating.
“The world knows that hundreds of Olympic dreams have been stolen by the doping system in the country where I was born,” Mr. Stepanov wrote in an affidavit submitted to the International Olympic Committee this fall. He had suggested banning Russia’s Olympic Committee for two years, or until the nation’s antidoping operations are recertified by regulators. Russia and its individual athletes are all but certain to miss the 2018 Paralympics given regulators’ refusal to recertify the nation last month.“The evidence is clear, that the doping system in Russia has not yet been truly reformed,” Mr. Stepanov wrote.Dr. Rodchenkov is living in an undisclosed location in the United States under protection of federal authorities. In August, “Icarus,” a film detailing Dr. Rodchenkov’s move to the United States and tell-all account, was released. In addition to sworn testimony and forensic evidence, Mr. Schmid cited the film as further evidence in his report.“Russia’s consistent denials lack any credibility, and its failure to produce all evidence in its possession only further confirms its high-level complicity,” Jim Walden, a lawyer for Dr. Rodchenkov, said Tuesday. The Russian sports ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Tuesday’s decision could have consequences for another major sports event scheduled to be held in Russia, next year’s $11 billion soccer World Cup. The nation’s deputy prime minister, Vitaly Mutko, was Russia’s top sports official during the 2014 Sochi Games and was directly implicated by Dr. Rodchenkov. As part of Tuesday’s ruling, Mr. Mutko was barred for life from the Olympics.Mr. Mutko is also the chairman of the local organizing committee for the World Cup, but FIFA said in a statement Tuesday that the I.O.C.’s punishments for Olympic doping would have “no impact” on its preparations for the tournament, which begins in June. COPPER MOUNTAIN, Colo. —Nikita Avtaneev was strapped to his snowboard, twirling through the thin, crisp air Tuesday, while his Olympic fate was being announced halfway around the world. It wasn’t until the end of the snowboarder’s training run that he received the news issued by the International Olympic Committee: Russia, Avtaneev’s home country, will not be able to compete in the Winter Games in South Korea in February because of widespread doping violations.The Olympic world immediately began processing the ramifications of the IOC’s unprecedented decision, calculating what the news means to the competition in PyeongChang this winter and to the dreams of athletes who have spent years in training.
Avtaneev, 22, is one of dozens of Russian athletes who hope to take advantage of an exemption allowed by the IOC that permits Olympic hopefuls to compete if they can prove they’re clear. They’d be designated by the IOC as an “Olympic Athlete from Russia” and would participate in the Olympics with no national anthem, flag or team uniform.“I want to compete,” said Avtaneev, who’s trying for his second Olympics in the men’s halfpipe. “I will stick the sticker on my helmet that I’m Russian.”Avtaneev is in Copper Mountain this week, competing in a Grand Prix event that serves as a qualifier for the Olympics. Regardless of how he does here, he’ll still need to navigate a separate qualification process to get to PyeongChang — an IOC panel that will review all Russian competitors to determine whether they have been disqualified for past doping violations and whether they have completed all pre-Olympics drug testing. The IOC’s decision has implications for virtually every sport, barring some formidable medal contenders from competing and insuring that some who do reach the podium might have to contend with an asterisk next to their name because of a diminished field. As the Winter Olympics host nation four years ago, Russia was able to compete in all 15 sports, sending more than 230 athletes to Sochi.While Russia was initially credited with 33 medals in Sochi, the country’s medal count has been reduced to 22 because of disqualifications related to doping. That number could drop further. Nearly half the Sochi medalists from Russia have been implicated in the doping scheme, and two dozen athletes are in the midst of disciplinary proceedings.Even before Tuesday’s IOC announcement, some of Russia’s top competitors had already been barred from competing in PyeongChang, including cross-country skier Alexander Legkov, who was stripped of two Sochi medals; skeleton slider Aleksandr Tretyakov, who lost his gold medal from Sochi; and speedskater Olga Fatkulina, who was stripped of her silver medal from Sochi.Some sports will surely notice the absence of a Russian team more than others. Tuesday’s decision had a big impact on sliding sports, such as bobsled, skeleton and luge; Nordic sports, including cross-country skiing and biathlon; and potentially figure skating, where Russia is a traditional podium threat.In skeleton, for instance, Russia sent six athletes to Sochi. Five have since been disqualified, and two Russian medals were vacated.“I’d be lying if I said I had a lot of optimism that they were going to come down with a harsh penalty,” said American slider Matt Antoine, who won a bronze medal in 2014. “I’m extremely pleased to see them make the hard decision — and the right decision — to protect the integrity of the Games. Their entire reputation was really on the line. In the end, they did the right thing.”At the Sochi Games, Russia won five figure skating medals, including three golds, and at this year’s world championships, Evgenia Medvedeva won the women’s championship, while Evgenia Tarasova and Vladimir Morozov took bronze in pairs. Medvedeva was only 14 years old during the Sochi Games and has faced no accusations of wrongdoing, which could make her a likely candidate for an IOC exemption. But Medvedeva told the IOC executive committee Tuesday that she could not yet commit to participating as a neutral athlete.
“I always believed that the opportunity to participate in the Olympics should be fought on the ice,” she said. “Unfortunately, now I understand that I may lose that chance because of a situation that doesn’t depend on me.?.?.?. I’m proud of my country. I have tremendous pride to represent it at the Games.”
Avtaneev felt similarly, that Tuesday’s decision effectively punishes many Russian athletes who’ve done nothing wrong. “No, it’s not right,” he said. “Those who are not clear with the doping, it’s their problem, so they should answer for themselves.”Russia also won five Sochi medals in short-track speedskating, four of which came from Viktor Ahn, one of the greatest to ever lace up a pair skates. Ahn was born in Seoul and competed for South Korea in the 2006 Olympics before obtaining Russian citizenship and skating for his adopted homeland in Sochi, where he won three gold medals and one bronze.Ahn’s return to Korean soil for a chance to cap his career in his native country promises to be one of these Olympics’ biggest story lines if he is granted neutral competitor status, which seems likely. He’d previously said he intended to retire following the PyeongChang Games.The decision casts an even darker cloud over the men’s hockey tournament. Already NHL players are barred from competing, and without Russia in the mix, it’s likely that players from the Moscow-based Kontinental Hockey League — widely considered the world’s second best — won’t be allowed to compete, further watering down the competitive pool.Tuesday’s news was mostly well-received from the administrators, coaches and athletes who compete under the Team USA banner. Tiger Shaw, CEO of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association, said the decision “demonstrates a strong commitment to the importance of clean sport.”“Now we look to the International Ski Federation [FIS] to hold a FIS Council meeting to review the IOC’s decision and related evidence to consider its impact on the Russian Ski Association, its FIS committee members, officials and athletes,” he said in a statement.Hayley Wickenheiser, a six-time Olympian from Canada and a member of the IOC’s Athletes’ Commission, says the burden now falls on the international federations for each sport as well as the IOC’s review panel to ensure that the Russians who do get to compete in PyeongChang are indeed clean.“It is not lost on many clean athletes that Russian athletes who were part of this system may have had no choice but to comply,” she said in a statement.The International Olympic Committee's executive board, led by president Thomas Bach, took the unprecedented step Tuesday of suspending the Russian Olympic Committee for "systematic manipulation of the anti-doping rules and system," but will permit individual athletes to compete in the upcoming Pyeongchang Winter Games if they meet standards determined by an IOC-convened panel.The ruling comes after months of investigations that uncovered voluminous evidence of corruption and sabotage leading up to and during the Sochi 2014 Games, implicating every segment of Russia's Olympic sports industry: athletes, team officials, scientists, anti-doping administrators and government authorities.With the Pyeongchang Winter Games less than 10 weeks away, the IOC is will now deal with the question of which Russian athletes should be eligible. It's a partial replay of the events preceding Rio de Janeiro's 2016 Summer Games, when the IOC also faced pressure to exclude Russia. This time around, there is was far stronger and more comprehensive evidence on the table, making the last-minute nature of the IOC's decision more glaring.Anti-doping agencies from 37 countries, including the United States, called for a blanket ban on the Russian Olympic Committee, citing the scope and detail of the conspiracy and the odds that few prominent actors in Russian sport could have been unaware of it. That group did advocate that a path should be created for clean athletes to make their cases, and offered to help provide criteria for that process.The strongest part of the IOC's ruling was suspending the Russian Olympic Committee "with immediate effect," based on recommendations from the Schmid Commission, which was charged with determining what roles were played by Russian officials and institutions.Individual Russian athletes who are invited under strict conditions to Pyeongchang 2018 will participate, be it in individual or team competitions, under the name "Olympic Athlete from Russia (OAR)." They will compete with a uniform bearing this name and under the Olympic Flag. The Olympic anthem will be played in any ceremony.No accreditation for officials from the Russian Ministry of Sport at Pyeongchang 2018.
The exclusion of Vitaly Mutko, Russian's former minister of sport, and his deputy minister, Yuri Nagornykh, from any participation in all future Olympic Games.The withdrawal of Dmitry Chernyshenko, former CEO of the Sochi 2014 organizing committee, from the coordination commission for Beijing 2022.Suspension of ROC President Alexander Zhukov as an IOC member, given that his membership is linked to his position as ROC president.The IOC reserves the right to take measures against and sanction other individuals implicated in the system.The ROC must reimburse the costs incurred by the IOC during the investigations and contribute to the establishment of the Independent Testing Authority (ITA) for the total sum of $15 million, to build the capacity and integrity of the global anti-doping system.The IOC will issue operational guidelines for the implementation of these decisions.The IOC may partially or fully lift the suspension of the ROC from the commencement of the closing ceremony in Pyeongchang, provided these decisions are fully respected and implemented by the ROC and by the invited athletes and officials.The IOC now has the daunting task of identifying which Russian athletes will be eligible to compete as Olympic Athletes from Russia. The process will be done under the aegis of the still-embryonic Independent Testing Authority (ITA), which is not yet fully operational but will eventually take on testing responsibility from some sports federations and other entities. A panel led by chairperson Valerie Fourneyron will also include a pre-Games task force with members from WADA, the Doping-Free Sports Unit (DFSU) and the IOC.Athletes who meet certain requirements will be on an invitation list that will be submitted to the panel for consideration:Athletes who have met the qualification standards for their respective sports.Athletes who are considered "clean" because they have not been disqualified or declared ineligible by any anti-doping violation; have gone through all pre-Games testing recommended by the panel; and have undergone any other testing mandated by the panel.Considering these factors, the IOC will ultimately determine who will be eligible for Pyeongchang from the invitation list.Any doctor or coach whose athlete has failed a doping test, and any Russian officials from Sochi 2014, will not be allowed for consideration.The foremost one: whether a Russian team competes in the hockey tournament. If it does, it would do so under a neutral flag.Then there's the Kontinental Hockey League issue.If the Russians do participate in the hockey tournament, the majority of the team's players will be from the KHL, since the NHL decided to not participate in the Games.The KHL already has an Olympic break (from Jan. 29 to Feb. 26) built into its season schedule. But Pavel Lysenkov of Sovetsky Sport told ESPN last month that the KHL would eliminate the break in its schedule if Russia was banned. "If Russia is not admitted to the Olympics for doping reasons, the KHL will cancel the pause window in one month, which is now in the regular season," he said.
KHL board member Alexander Medvedev told Russian news agency TASS last month that "contracted players won't be able to go anywhere" should the IOC ban Russia from the 2018 Games. There was also talk that the Russian parliament was preparing a bill that would ban KHL players from leaving for the Games.
That decision would send ripples through several countries. There were 15 KHL players on the Team Canada roster for the Karjala Cup tournament, which is an Olympic showcase. There were seven KHL players on the Team USA roster for the upcoming Deutschland Cup tournament.Russia's reaction?Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Mutko, left, and President Vladimir Putin have both denied that there was systemic, government-enabled doping in Russia.There was no immediate reaction from Russian officials, but statements out of Russia became more defiant as more evidence was released into the public realm leading into Tuesday's ruling.In Russia, where athletics is a crucial flagship for national pride, the prospect of Russian athletes competing under a neutral flag and barring their national anthem from being played in medal ceremonies has prompted outrage and boycott threats.Bach, who was unable to defend his 1976 Olympic fencing gold medal when West Germany joined the U.S.-led boycott of the Moscow Games four years later, has previously expressed his distaste for the effect boycotts have on athletes.Officials up to and including Mutko, who is now Russia's deputy prime minister, have continued to deny that there was systemic, government-enabled doping despite testimony to the contrary. In his statement to the Schmid Commission, whistleblower and former RUSADA staff member Vitaly Stepanov includes his methodical historical overview of the consolidation of Olympic sport administration and anti-doping functions under Mutko's control.Athletes sanctioned by the Oswald Commission -- there are 25 thus far -- also have made vehement declarations of innocence, including skeleton racer Elena Nikitina, who posted an open letter on her Instagram feed asking Putin to support them. Some of the sanctioned athletes say they will appeal and refuse to return their medals. TASS reported that Mikhail Prokhorov, the former president of the Russian Biathlon Union and majority owner of the NBA's Brooklyn Nets, said he would provide financial and legal support for a lawsuit against former Moscow lab director Grigory Rodchenkov.
Rodchenkov, who designed the doping and test-evasion strategy for Russia's Olympic athletes under an umbrella "Sochi Plan," fled to the United States in late 2015 and is under the protection of federal authorities.The invective directed toward Rodchenkov, whom Russian officials have painted as a traitor who acted unilaterally, also increased in volume. Russian law enforcement authorities have issued a warrant for his arrest and indicated they want him extradited, though the U.S. and Russia do not have an extradition agreement. Last month, honorary ROC President Leonid Tyagachev told a radio reporter that "Rodchenkov should be shot for lying, like Stalin would have done," according to The Guardian.IOC spokesman Mark Adams told ESPN in an email last week that the IOC "has written to the Russian Olympic Committee and has expressed its dismay with such inappropriate.The evidence against the ROc.Former Moscow lab director Grigory Rodchenkov designed the doping and test-evasion policy for Russia's Olympic athletes. He has since become the main whistleblower in the case. The oldest "new" evidence that emerged since Rio dates back to December 2016, when Canadian law professor Richard McLaren released the second and far more extensive portion of his independent report commissioned by WADA. McLaren Part II concluded that an "institutional conspiracy" encompassed 1,000 athletes across summer and winter sports, anti-doping and scientific personnel and government officials. Much of McLaren's work relied on forensic analysis that corroborated statements and evidence provided by Rodchenkov.Two IOC commissions formed in the summer of 2016 followed up on McLaren's work: the Oswald Commission, which is investigating cases and determining sanctions against individual athletes, and the Schmid Commission, charged with determining what roles were played by Russian officials and institutions. However, cybersecurity issues stalled the Schmid Commission's cooperation with McLaren, and neither commission asked for formal testimony from Rodchenkov until the early fall of 2017. Nevertheless, the Oswald Commission made strong statements supporting Rodchenkov's credibility as a witness in a published ruling explaining its rationale for stripping cross-country skier Alexander Legkov of his Sochi medals and banning him from future Games for doping.
The Legkov decision included the first public disclosure that Rodchenkov had kept detailed handwritten diaries before and during the Sochi Games. Continuous notes from that time are considered among the most unassailable evidence by legal experts, and they fleshed out Rodchenkov's previous statements to McLaren, the New York Times and in the independent documentary "Icarus."Finally, after months during which the Russian authorities refused to turn over the Moscow lab's electronic database, WADA received it from an unidentified whistleblower in October. Records from the Laboratory Information Management System cover the period from 2012 to 2015. WADA chief investigator Gunter Younger told the German ARD network last week that the database had been authenticated. The agency is currently identifying potential doping violations in the data and will turn that information over to the international winter sports federations by the end of December, several sources told ESPN.Tony Granato was a 15-year-old rink rat from Downer's Grove, Illinois, when he first heard ABC's Al Michaels ask, "Do you believe in miracles?" As he recalls from that night in 1980, "I watched the game on the floor of my parents' bedroom. Seeing the Americans celebrate that night made me want to succeed in hockey."Now, 38 years and 10 Winter Games later, fans of the U.S. Olympic men's hockey team are being asked, "Do you believe in Tony Granato?"The former Wisconsin and NHL star and current Badger head coach has been tasked with shepherding a loose-knit collection of European players, minor leaguers, collegians and hangers-on to PyeongChang for the 2018 Olympics. They hope to bring home a medal, preferably -- albeit improbably -- the first gold one for America since 1980.There is at least one man who does believe in Granato. Mark Johnson was on the ice that Friday night, Feb. 22, 1980, in Lake Placid. The Wisconsin collegian was keeping the puck away from the big bad Red Army as Michaels counted down the final seconds of Team USA's 4-3 upset over the Soviet Union in the semifinal game."Tony's the perfect fit," says Johnson, who went on to a stellar NHL career before returning to his alma mater, where he's been the women's coach since 2002. "He knows hockey and players as well as anyone. He's a great competitor and communicator. And he knows what the importance of playing in an Olympics, coaching in the Olympics, is like."In some ways, former U.S. head coach Herb Brooks had it easier than Granato when he set out for Lake Placid with a bunch of college kids to take on the Soviets. He had the foresight to winnow down the roster with a 300-question psychological test, and the time to forge the players together with a 61-game exhibition schedule.Granato, on the other hand, was first asked to coach the team last July by USA Hockey's Jim Johannson, a former Olympic teammate and another ex-Badger. The NHL had announced in April that it was declining to participate in the Olympics for the first time in 20 years, leading USA Hockey to organize a search party. What better choice than Granato, who had college, Olympic and pro experience as a player and a coach, and who knows pretty much everybody in the family of hockey -- in part because a third of them seem to be his actual relatives?When I told my wife, Linda, I was kind of like, 'Hey, Hon, guess what?' When I asked our athletic director, Barry Alvarez, if I could do it, he first assumed I was going to have to give up my day job for a year. But I told him, no, I was going to continue to coach the men's team here."Indeed, Granato has been multitasking ever since he was officially named the Olympic coach at the beginning of August. Back when Johnson coached the U.S. Women's National Team at the 2010 Games in Vancouver, he took a sabbatical from Wisconsin. "Different deal," says Johnson. "USA Hockey, not to mention Canada, had year-round programs in place for the women. This year, the men had to change on the fly."Besides their ties to Madison, Granato and Johnson, whose father was the legendary coach, "Badger Bob" Johnson, have another common line on their resume that works to their advantage. In order to become head coaches at their alma mater, they had to complete their degrees. "It definitely made me a better coach," says Johnson."It was a fantastic experience," says Granato, who was 16 credits shy when he became a 52-year-old student the summer before he took over as coach for the 2016-17 season. "I got to appreciate what the demands of being a student and an athlete are like -- I know what they have to do before and after practice. From my professors, I learned different ways to communicate, ways that help me get my points across to players -- some of them need to see film, some need me to draw it on a whiteboard, some only need me to whisper in their ear."And I acquired a whole new set of organizational skills to attend class, write papers and coach the team. After spending two semesters balancing those responsibilities, the idea of coaching two hockey teams at once didn't seem so crazy to me."The only dispensation that Granato received in order to get his degree in Human Development and Family Studies was that the department waived the qualification that he get an internship. Apparently, raising four children, all of whom graduated before he did last June, satisfied that requirement.How were Granato's grades, by the way?"Better than they were when I was 21," he says.Now, for extra credit, he will have to form a family of 25 players in a week. How will he do that? "Well, I can show them Miracle with Kurt Russell," he says. "Actually, I'm partial to the earlier movie about the team, Miracle on Ice, with Karl Malden as Herb Brooks."So what's a day in the life of a man with two coaching jobs like? Well, let's pick it up at 3 p.m. on Dec. 5, three days before Notre Dame would come into the Kohl Center to play two games with the Badgers, and 66 days before the members of the USA Team would assemble in South Korea.Granato is in the lobby of the LaBahn Arena, where the team practices, filming an interview for "Badger Hockey Digest" with Brian Posick, the voice of Wisconsin men's hockey. There's an easy rapport between them that comes with familiarity and the shared love of hockey -- Brian's daughter, Maddie, is a freshman forward for the Badgers' women's team. They replay the just-completed split with Minnesota, preview the games with the red-hot Fighting Irish and remind fans of the Teddy Bear Toss on Saturday.
"Before Tony got here," says Posick, "I knew of him, but I didn't really know him. I saw how he changed the environment for a team that won eight games the year before and coached them to 20 wins and nearly the NCAA tournament. He brought the same determination and dedication that he brought to the NHL. You need that to stand 5-10 and deliver for 13 years. "At the ensuing 4 p.m. practice, Granato lets his assistants, Mark Osiecki and Mark Strobel, run the show. Still, he participates in the drills, showing off the same hands that set a Ranger rookie goal-scoring record (36) in 1988-89 and racked up 82 points (37/45) for the Kings in 1992-93. He's clearly pleased at the intensity of a tight, quarter-ice 3-on-3 drill to end the practice, but when one of his players gets too hot under the collar, he gently takes him aside.Afterward, he meets with the media to talk about Notre Dame and the history of the rivalry. The only time the Olympics comes up is when he's asked about the possibility of sophomore center Trent Frederic making the team. "We'll see," says Granato, who's not giving anything away until the team is named at the NHL Winter Classic at CitiField on Jan. 1. "He's played well enough."Except for a trip to Augsburg, Germany, for the Deutschland Cup, a mid-November tournament in which Team USA lost to Slovakia, Russia and Germany, Granato has been working remotely with the Olympic team via phone and Skype with Johannson and his assistant coaches, former Badger Chris Chelios, Scott Young, Ron Rolston and Keith Allain. "It's a great group," says Granato. "I trust them, and I enjoy working with them."In mid-November, Ryan Stoa, who has played in the KHL since 2014, and other Team USA players competed at the Deutschland Cup in Germany. The team lost all three of its games. Sebastian Widmann/Bongarts/Getty Images
The last order of Dec. 5 is to head over to the Great Dane Pub in the Hilldale Shopping Center at the west end of Madison to sit with Prosick for their regular radio show. There they sit in the middle of the dining room, talking hockey and taking calls while the regulars play shuffleboard and shoot pool in the corner. It's a little like Madison itself -- the kind of place you want to come back to.At the end of the show, Granato does some signing and schmoozing with the patrons as he heads toward the door for home. He has an early morning meeting with Osiecki and Strobel and director of operations Shane Connelly to go over the recruiting plans for the next three seasons and practice plans for Notre Dame. After that, there's a Big Ten media conference call and a check-in with Johannson on the Olympic prospects.What will the team look like? Well, he does have the services of captain Brian Gionta, the 5-foot-7, 15-year veteran, and he'll probably pick four Yale Gen Xers whom Allain coached, as well as a bunch of guys named Ryan (Malone, Stoa, Lasch, Zapolski, Gunderson). As for the collegiate players, there's Frederic and Boston University's Jordan Greenway, whose brother J.D. plays for Granato, and Troy Terry from the University of Denver."The Olympic talk is starting to pick up in Madison," says Prosick. "More and more people are asking Tony to sign sweaters that say 'Team USA.' There is this tremendous sense of pride that Tony is continuing the Wisconsin tradition in the Olympics."There is also the Granato tradition -- Tony's sister Cammi was on the 1998 gold-winning USA team in Nagano.
"That thrill of winning in the Olympics, not just playing, is something that Tony can convey to this team," says Johnson. "We've talked about it a little. Nobody knew who we were in 1980, either. Nobody expected us to win."Al Michaels, who will again be calling Olympic hockey, might be asking the same question.It would be something if the answers were the same.