Dozens of Russian athletes have no idea if they’re competing in the Olympics yet

Dozens of Russian athletes accused of doping still don’t know if they’ll be competing in the Winter Olympics in South Korea, which start Friday — and they won’t find out until just a few hours before the opening ceremony of the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang officially kicks off.

Back in December, the International Olympic Committee, the body that oversees the Olympic Games, announced that it was banning Russia from competing in Pyeongchang as punishment for a vast, government-run doping scheme.

The IOC made the decision after completing a lengthy investigation into Russia’s doping program. The World Anti-Doping Agency, the premier international watchdog for monitoring athletes’ use of illicit substances, also released a report in December 2016 that found damning evidence that Russia had used tactics like urine sample swapping to mask its cheating in international sports for years, including at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.

But the IOC’s ban was actually not a total ban. Instead, it said that individual Russian athletes could still compete if they could pass a screening process and demonstrate that they hadn’t violated doping rules. And any who did pass the screening process wouldn’t be allowed to display their country’s color or flag, instead competing as neutral “Olympic Athletes from Russia.”

While 169 Russians passed that screening process and were invited to the 2018 Winter Games, many more Russian athletes believed they had been unfairly excluded and turned to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, the highest legal body in the world of sports, to appeal the IOC’s decision. As of right now, 47 of those who appealed are still in limbo awaiting a final decision. The ruling is expected to come down just nine hours before the games are scheduled to begin.

The athletes include figure skaters, hockey players, speedskaters, and cross-country skiers. A number of them are well known and could reshape the competitions they would enter, such as Viktor Ahn, a six-time gold medalist short track speedskater.

Complicating matters further, even if the Court of Arbitration for Sport rules in favor of the Russian athletes on Friday morning, the IOC doesn’t have to allow the Russian athletes to compete.

Earlier this week the committee refused to admit 15 Russian athletes that were cleared of doping allegations by the Court of Arbitration for Sport in another appeal. IOC president Thomas Bach bristled at the tribunal’s ruling, calling it “disappointing” and declaring that it wasn’t enough to admit them to the games. “The privilege to be invited requires more than just the absence of a sanction,” he said.

In other words, nobody knows what’s going to happen next with these 47 athletes.

To understand why Russian participation in the 2018 Winter Olympics is so controversial, you have to understand how big and elaborate its doping program was.

As early as 2015, the World Anti-Doping Agency released reports that provided evidence of systematic state-sponsored doping in Russia meant to give its athletes an advantage in international sports.

But in 2016, the agency found that Russia’s program was much larger than previously believed. The blockbuster report it put out in December of that year claimed that Russia’s doping program affected more than 1,000 athletes across dozens of different sports. The investigation found evidence of urine sample swapping and cover-ups operating on an “unprecedented scale” between 2011 and 2015, including during the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

“It is impossible to know just how deep and how far back this conspiracy goes,” Richard McLaren, the author of the report, told journalists at the time. “For years, international sports competitions have unknowingly been hijacked by Russians. Coaches and athletes have been playing on an uneven field. Sports fans and spectators have been deceived. It’s time that this stops.”

The investigation said that the urine samples of 12 Russian medalists at the Sochi Winter Olympics, where Russia won 33 medals, showed signs of tampering. That was typically detected through DNA inconsistencies in the urine or scratches on the inside of the cap of the sample. And 15 medalists during the 2012 London Olympics, where Russia won 72 medals, had samples that had been tampered with.

”It was a cover-up that evolved from uncontrolled chaos to an institutionalized and disciplined medal-winning conspiracy,” McLaren explained. The investigation claims that the scheme’s participants included the Russian Sports Ministry, the FSB intelligence service, and, somewhat ironically, the country’s own anti-doping agency.

A previous report had already documented how during the Sochi Games, Russian athletes had their urine samples snuck out of labs through “mouse holes,” opened up using a technique that allows the seal to stay intact, replaced with clean urine, and then placed back in the lab. The report claimed that the process was overseen by Russian secret service agents disguised as sewer engineers.

The revelations shocked the world, and sports officials across the international community called for harsh penalties against Russia — including banning the country from the Olympics altogether until they cleaned up their act.

After years of controversy surrounding Russian doping, the IOC finally announced in December 2017 that it was banning Russia from participating in the 2018 games. But its decision to still potentially allow individual Russian athletes to compete in the 2018 Winter Games if they passed a special screening process led to the current chaos.

That exception, which critics of Russia’s doping scheme have slammed as a bizarre half-measure in response to one of the biggest scandals in international sports history, has resulted in a sizable Russian presence at the games. The 169 ”Olympic Athletes from Russia” that have been approved to compete so far is pretty substantial; the US is sending 244 athletes.

And because the IOC announced its rather unusual Russia policy just two months before the 2018 Games were scheduled to begin, the timing of the appeals process is effectively colliding with the tournament itself.

A complete ban on Russian athletes might have caused another kind of controversy, but we know at least it would’ve been simpler.