Christine Brennan

USA TODAY Sports

WASHINGTON — In the wake of recent calls from sports leaders in the United States and Germany that Russia be banned from the 2018 Winter Olympics, the president of the organizing committee for those Games told USA TODAY Sports on Monday that he believes Russia will compete next year.

“With their renewed plan and actions, I think they can meet the (anti-doping) criteria,” Lee Hee-beom, president and CEO of the Pyeongchang Organizing Committee, said during an interview.

“I’m not worried. From our point, as the president of POCOG, we will keep the IOC criteria very strictly, but I believe that Russia can meet that criteria.”

Lee said he was basing his optimism on a report by a representative of the Russian National Olympic Committee at a meeting in Qatar last fall. The report apparently detailed Russia’s plans to clean up a massive, state-sponsored doping program involving more than 1,000 of its elite athletes that stretched from the 2012 to the 2014 Olympic Games.

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But the national anti-doping organizations of 19 countries, along with top international sports officials from the USA and Germany, aren’t buying it. The 19 organizations recently reiterated a call they made before the 2016 Rio Olympics that all Russian athletes be banned from international competitions until Russia complies with the anti-doping rules being followed by the rest of the world.

Then, U.S. Figure Skating president Sam Auxier turned up the heat at his sport’s national championships last week when he said that Russia did not belong in Pyeongchang.

“I mean, it’s state sponsored, it was … a huge program, well-coordinated, to cheat and they should pay a pretty stiff penalty," he said. "I think the only way the IOC (International Olympic Committee) and the ISU (International Skating Union) maintain any level of integrity is to take a strong stand and weigh a strong penalty for those actions.”

Joining Auxier is Alfons Hoermann, the president of the German Olympic Committee, who called for Russia to be banned from both the 2018 and 2020 Olympic Games if its sports leaders are found to have known about the state-sponsored doping.

World Anti-Doping Agency investigations have found that Russian government officials and anti-doping leaders ran the massive doping campaign, but not the Russian Olympic Committee.