PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — It will be in the predawn hours in western Canada when William Dutton settles in to watch the men’s 500-meter speedskating event at the Winter Olympics. That Dutton is on the couch and not at his second Games owes in part to the long legal drama rooted in the complex aftermath of the Russian doping scandal.

Dutton, 28, considers himself a collateral victim of the International Olympic Committee’s protracted process of deciding whether to bar dozens of Russians after one of the most audacious doping plots in sports history. In his view, had the I.O.C. acted more quickly and taken a hard line sooner, he would be on the start line on Monday.

“It seems strange not being there,” Dutton said by phone, speaking from his father’s house in Vancouver. “I was finally hitting my stride, all that stuff I worked so hard for. Now it’s just gone.”

A year and a half after the scandal surfaced — and just two months before the start of the Games — the I.O.C. announced on Dec. 5 that Russia was effectively banned from the Olympics. Only Russian athletes it determined had no links to the doping scheme would be allowed to participate, under a neutral flag.