Disappointing 13th-place finish in the medals table for Olympic Athletes from Russia is nation’s lowest since end of the Soviet Union

The two gold medals won by Olympic Athletes from Russia in Pyeongchang represents the worst ever top-line performance by a Russian team at a Winter Olympics. Their position of 13th in the medal table is the lowest achieved by a team of Russian athletes since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

However, the overall OAR medal count of 17 exceeded that earned by Russia in recent years in Vancouver in 2010 and in Salt Lake City in 2002. It is also a larger total than the Soviet Union made on three occasions. But that is in part because of the expansion of the number of medals available in the games. The Soviet Union never finished lower than second in a Winter Olympics medal table.

Russian athletes were competing under a neutral banner after a ban was placed on the country for systematic doping violations at previous Games. Many athletes who had competed for the nation in their home Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014 were unable to compete because of their association with the Russian state doping programme.

A chart of medals won by the Soviet Union (1956-1988), Unified team (1992), Russia (1994-2014) and the Olympic Athletes from Russia (2018) shows that Sochi was a high-point compared to other recent performances.

Russian Winter Olympic medal performances Russian Winter Olympic medal performances

The OAR’s two golds in Pyeongchang were won by 15 year old Alina Zagitova in figure skating and the men’s hockey team.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Alina Zagitova, an Olympic Athlete from Russia, on her way to winning gold in the Winter Olympics Photograph: The Asahi Shimbun/(Credit too long, see caption)

At their medal ceremony, the hockey players sang the Russian anthem over the top of the Olympic anthem being played on the loudspeakers - despite the IOC ban on Russia which prohibited the use of the Russian flag or anthem. The IOC later issued a statement saying: “We understand that this was over excitement by the athletes who had just won a gold medal in extraordinary circumstances.”

Despite the IOC ban, Russian athletes were well-supported in Pyeongchang, with fans going the extra mile to demonstrate that Russia was at the Games. “We bought the [2014 Sochi] uniform specially so that Russianness is at least visible somehow” Andrei Savinov, a 53-year-old from Moscow, told reporters. Other fans, especially when watching the hockey, wore costumes that harked back to national identity and the USSR era.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Fans waving a Soviet Union flag before the OAR clash with the USA in the men’s ice hockey Photograph: Brian Snyder/Reuters

The Olympic Athletes from Russia would have won one additional medal, but the bronze won in the mixed doubles curling in Pyeongchang was stripped from Alexander Krushelnitsky after he tested positive for the banned heart drug meldonium.



Russian athlete filmed in 'I don’t do doping' shirt fails Olympic drug test Read more

Another Russian athlete who failed a test during the Games was bobsleigh pilot Nadezhda Sergeeva. She denies taking a banned substance, and was filmed before the Pyeongchang event wearing an “I don’t do doping” sweatshirt.

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the talent pool available to the Russian team shrank. In 1992 the Unified Team represented a similar geographic area to Soviet Russia, with the exception of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, who competed as individual nation states in Albertville. By the time the next Winter Olympics came around, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan all had their own Olympic committees and were competing under their own flags.



The Russian Empire was represented at four Summer Olympic Games between 1900 and 1912. During that time the empire won one medal in a winter sport – Nikolai Panin securing gold in figure skating at the 1908 London Olympics.

