Who will miss Pyeongchang Olympic Games?

The strongest Russian athletes, participants and winners of the Olympic Games, despite the fact they were never involved in doping scandals, had not been included in the pool from which Russian competitors will be invited to compete in Pyeongchang. Russian biathlon racers Alexei Volkov and Yevgeny Garanichev, as well as figure skaters Ksenia Stolbova and Ivan Bukin will not be allowed to take part in next month’s Olympic Games, the Russian Figure Skating Federation said, citing a directive from the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

Ksenia Stolbova's partner was allowed, but he cannot compete without his partner.

"This ungrounded and absurd decision once again proves the inadequacy of the IOC statements that it makes decisions on its own without yielding to outside pressure and violates all basic principles of the Olympic Charter, in particular the inadmissibility of discrimination, the observance of the principles of solidarity and fair play," the RFSF statement said.

Vice President of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) Stanislav Pozdnyakov announced earlier in the day that the national committee received a list from the IOC of the invited national athletes to the 2018 Winter Games and the list and it missed many athletes, including the team’s leaders such as 2014 Olympic Champion in biathlon Anton Shipulin, two-time World Champion in cross-country skiing Sergey Ustyugov and six-time Olympic Champion in short track Viktor Ahn. His team partners Denis Airapetyan and Vladimir Grigoryev were also barred, as well as speedskaters Pavel Kulizhnikov and Denis Yuskov.

"Athletes like Viktor Ahn, Anton Shipulin and Sergei Ustyugov were not involved in the Oswald commission proceedings," Pozdnyakov said. "They were never involved in doping stories and the many tests they passed over their careers have showed that they are clean athletes. Nevertheless their names are absent from the list of potential Olympic participants."

On Friday, the IOC said it had cut an initial list of 500 Russian athletes down to a pool of 389, but didn't give any names.