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By PETER ADLER

Alexander Ovechkin should fear no more. It seems very likely there will be no Team Russia at the Olympic Games next year anyway, so, he will not be missed.

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It all has to do with the more or less recent scandal involving Russian government’s knowing participation in Russian athletes’ doping. The International Olympic Committee (IOC), in an attempt show it has a backbone, banned the official Russian team from the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, and relented only to permit individual athletes under an independent and neutral banner.

When it became obvious that the IOC planned a similar approach for the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang in South Korea, Russian authorities described themselves as scandalized.

According to reliable sources, a recent IOC meeting was informed in an official letter from the Russian Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) that Team Russia will either come in under the flag of its country, wearing its country’s emblem on its members’ uniforms, or there will be no Team Russia, period.