Sport in Russia

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The most popular sport in Russia is soccer.[1] According to Yandex search analysis results rating of the most popular sports among Russians: "Football topped the list of the most popular sports in Russia" with 5 to 10 million requests. Ice hockey came in second with handball, basketball, futsal, boxing, auto racing, volleyball, athletics, tennis, and chess rounding out the top ten rankings.[2] Other popular sports include bandy, biathlon, figure skating, weightlifting, gymnastics, wrestling, martial arts, rugby union, and skiing.[3]

The Soviet Union (USSR) competed in the Olympic Games for the first time at the 1952 Summer Olympics. Soviet and later Russian athletes never finished below fourth place in the number of gold and total medals collected at the Summer Olympics in which they competed. Russia has the most medals stripped for doping violations (51), the most of any country, four times the number of the runner-up, and nearly a third of the global total. The Russian team was partially banned from the 2016 Rio Olympics and 2018 Winter Olympics due to the state-sponsored doping scandal.[4][5] Russian athletes were allowed to participate at the 2018 Olympics under a neutral flag with a name "Olympic Athletes from Russia".

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) condemned Russia's "breach of the Olympic Truce adopted by the UN General Assembly".[6] The IOC called on individual federations to ban Russian athletes from participating in any international events until further notice.[7] The IOC also withdrew the Olympic Order from Vladimir Putin.[8] The International Paralympic Committee on 3 March banned Russian athletes from competing at the 2022 Winter Paralympics.[9][10]

On 12 October 2023, the IOC issued a statement noting that after Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) unilaterally transferred four regions that were originally under the jurisdiction of the National Olympic Committee of Ukraine: Donetsk Oblast, Luhansk Oblast, Kherson Oblast, and Zaporizhzhia Oblast to the ROC; at the time, its president said "I don’t see any difficulties here."[11][12] The IOC stated that the ROC's unilateral action constituted a breach of the Olympic Charter because it violated the territorial integrity of the NOC of Ukraine, and further announced the immediate suspension of the membership of the ROC.[13][11] The IOC stated that as a result the ROC was no longer entitled to operate as a National Olympic Committee, and could not receive any funding from the Olympic Movement, and that the IOC reserved the right to decide about the participation of individual neutral athletes with a Russian passport in the Olympic Games Paris 2024 and the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026.[11]

  1. ^ Planet, Lonely; Richmond, Simon; Bennetts, Marc; Duca, Marc Di; Haywood, Anthony; Kaminski, Anna; Masters, Tom; Sheward, Tamara; Louis, Regis St; Vorhees, Mara (1 February 2015). Lonely Planet Russia. Lonely Planet. ISBN 9781743605011. Retrieved 16 December 2017 – via Google Books.
  2. ^ "Google Translate". Translate.google.com. Retrieved 16 December 2017.
  3. ^ "Google Translate". Translate.google.com. Retrieved 16 December 2017.
  4. ^ "With one year until 2018 Winter Games, Russia's status murky". Espn.com. 9 February 2017. Retrieved 16 December 2017.
  5. ^ "IOC suspends Russian NOC and creates a path for clean individual athletes to compete in PyeongChang 2018 under the Olympic Flag". Olympic.org. 5 December 2017. Retrieved 16 December 2017.
  6. ^ "IOC strongly condemns the breach of the Olympic Truce". International Olympic Committee. 24 February 2022. Archived from the original on 25 February 2022. Retrieved 25 February 2022.
  7. ^ "IOC bars Russian and Belarusian athletes from events". BBC News. 27 February 2022. Archived from the original on 6 March 2022. Retrieved 28 February 2022.
  8. ^ Lloyd, Owen (28 February 2022). "IOC recommends athletes from Russia and Belarus are banned from all sport, strips Putin of Olympic Order". InsideTheGames.biz. Retrieved 28 February 2022.
  9. ^ "Russian, Belarusian athletes banned from Beijing Paralympics in reversal of original decision by organizers". The San Francisco Diego Union Tribute. 3 March 2022. Retrieved 3 March 2022.
  10. ^ Houston, Michael (3 March 2022). "Athletes from Russia and Belarus banned from competing at Beijing 2022 Paralympics". InsideTheGames.biz. Retrieved 3 March 2022.
  11. ^ a b c [1]
  12. ^ "Russian Olympic Committee accepts members from annexed Ukrainian territories". www.insidethegames.biz. 5 October 2023.
  13. ^ IOC Executive Board suspends Russian Olympic Committee with immediate effect