Olympic preview
It's only two days to go until the start of the Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea. The flame lighting ceremony will be overshadowed, however, by the fact that Russia, one of the most powerful winter sports nations, will not be present at the Games as a team.
At the end of last year, the International Olympic Committee banned Russia over state-sponsored doping. An independent report from 2016 drawn up by the Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren said more than 1,000 Russian athletes covering over 30 sports benefited from the centralised doping programme for a period of five years, in the run-up to the 2014 Winter Olympics hosted by the Russian city of Sochi.
This is the first time in the history of the Olympic Games that a country has been banned from the Games. However, 168 Russian athletes considered clean by the International Olympic Committee were cleared to compete in the Games individually, under a neutral flag. 13 other Russian athletes and two coaches who received lifetime bans by the International Olympic Committee for involvement in the institutionalised doping programme were cleared by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. They were still barred from attending the Games, so they again went to court, which is now examining the case.
Even without many Russian athletes, the Winter Olympic Games in South Korea are the biggest in history, with a total of 2,925 athletes from 92 different countries competing in 102 medal events.
Romania will compete in bobsleigh, alpine skiing, cross-country skiing, ski jumping, speed skating, biathlon, luge and skeleton. The team is made up of 28 athletes, including one substitute, accompanied by 27 coaches and officials. The last time Romania won a medal at the Winter Olympics was 50 years ago, in Grenoble, France, when Ion Panturu and Nicolae Neagoe won the bronze in bobsleigh. Since then, the closest Romania came to winning a medal was in 1992 in Albertville, France, when the luge pair Ion Apostol and Liviu Cepoi finished in the fourth place.
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