GANGNEUNG, South Korea — The Winter Olympics close on Sunday, and Russia, with its sporting reputation battered by systematic doping and its competitive ranks thinned by banned athletes, has yet to win a gold medal.

That is widely expected to change by Friday at the latest, when the Russian figure skaters and training partners — Alina Zagitova, 15, and Evgenia Medvedeva, 18 — will be consensus choices to win gold and silver in the women’s competition.

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Follow our live coverage of the women’s figure skating free skate program here.

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Nominally, Russia was barred from these Games after operating a doping scheme at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia. But 169 individual athletes were permitted to compete as neutrals as “Olympic Athletes from Russia.” That includes Zagitova, the recently crowned European champion who won Wednesday’s short program with a world-record 82.92 points.

Only minutes earlier, Medvedeva, a two-time world champion who broke a bone in her right foot last fall, had established a world record of 81.61 points. They train with the same coach in Moscow and appear to be competing in a private contest to determine which will become Olympic champion.