Reporter: 
Dan Purizhansky
On December 5, 2017, the International Olympic Committee banned athletes from competing under the Russian flag at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. This decision comes after years of investigation into the alleged Russian system of institutional doping that was present at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. Athletes from Russia will be allowed to compete provided that they have been cleared from using performance-enhancing drugs and that they have no history of abusing PEDs. These athletes, however, will be forced to compete under the neutral Olympic flag, and if they win a gold medal, the Olympic anthem will be played instead of the Russian one.
After a stunning loss at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, Russia’s president at the time, Dmitri Medvedev, became determined to make Russia do better at the subsequent Winter Olympics in Sochi. He allegedly saw a loss at Sochi, which was on Russian home soil, to be a potential source of humiliation and subsequently began instituting a system of government sponsored doping.
The IOC’s decision to ban the Russian Olympic Committee was met by severe backlash within Russia. Although Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, has allowed Russian athletes to compete under a neutral flag at the Winter Olympics, others in Russia have become enraged by this decisioned. Many have condemned Russian athletes that are willing to compete at the Olympics as traitors, while others have described the motivations behind the ban as racist and conflict-hungry. Overall, however, the ban is just another notch in Russia’s distrust of the West.
