TERSKOL, Russia (AP) — Every time Nikita Filippov races, it’s an uphill struggle. At the Olympics, even more so.
The 23-year-old from Russia’s far eastern Kamchatka peninsula is a medal contender in the rugged new Olympic sport of ski mountaineering — sprinting up a slope and then skiing back down.
At the Milan Cortina Olympics, he’ll be one of the few Russians competing as “Individual Neutral Athletes.” That means they formally aren’t representing their country. They cannot wear any Russian symbols and won’t hear the Russian national anthem if they win a gold medal.
“It gives me more competitive zeal in the race because I want to prove to everyone that we’re strong, even without the flag or anthem and can beat anyone,” Filippov told The Associated Press at a training camp in the Caucasus mountains. “I think everyone knows where we’re from and maybe it even attracts more attention.”
Many sports barred Russian athletes from competing as part of the diplomatic fallout after Russian troops moved into Ukraine four days after the last Winter Olympics in 2022. Ahead of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, the International Olympic Committee gradually opened up paths for athletes from Russia and its ally Belarus to qualify with neutral status.
Fifteen Russians competed as neutral athletes in Paris, winning their only medal in tennis.
The number could be even lower in Milan Cortina. Like in Paris, they won’t be able to parade as a delegation in the opening ceremony.
Filippov, the first Russian “neutral” athlete to qualify a spot for Milan Cortina, said that didn’t bother him.
“I’ll get more rest and have more strength in the race than other athletes,” he said.
No Ovechkin
How many Russians will join Filippov at the the games remains unclear. In December, Russian Sports Minister Mikhail Degtyarev told broadcaster Match TV that he expected a maximum of 15 or 20 athletes could qualify, but only three Russians and one Belarusian have so far received and accepted invitations.
The IOC and its new president Kirsty Coventry, favor allowing Russians to compete as neutrals in most events, though not team sports like hockey, meaning Alexander Ovechkin and other Russian NHL stars won’t play in Milan.
Figure skaters Adeliia Petrosian and Petr Gumennik could be medal contenders and qualified in September. A handful of Russians are likely to compete in other sports, depending on qualification rankings and IOC approval.
Cross-country skiers Savelii Korostelev and Dariya Nepryaeva produced top-10 finishes in the Tour de Ski series over the holidays, shortly after they returned to international competition for the first time since 2022.
Athletes are ineligible for neutral status from the IOC if they are under contract with Russian or Belarusian security agencies or the military, or if they have expressed support for Russia’s actions in Ukraine. Ukrainian officials have disputed whether some of those Russians competing in Olympic qualifiers truly meet the neutral restrictions.
Most winter sports bodies have allowed Russians to compete in such qualifiers in recent weeks, amid a series of legal defeats for policies banning Russian athletes.
Some have faced additional obstacles. No Russians competed at last week’s luge World Cup in neighboring Latvia after the country’s foreign minister banned 14 Russian athletes from entering the country. Two Russian ski jumpers have missed a series of World Cup events across Europe because of visa issues.
The shadow of Sochi
Russian athletes haven’t competed under their country’s flag at a Winter Olympics since 2014, when Russia hosted a doping-tainted Games in Sochi.
Over years of legal battles, fallout from those drug cases meant Russians had to compete in Pyeongchang in 2018 as “Olympic Athletes from Russia” and in Beijing in 2022 as the Russian Olympic Committee, both times without the national anthem.
The World Anti-Doping Agency still lists Russia’s national testing body as “non-compliant” and says it can’t visit Russia for in-person checks on its performance.
Russia denied the state was complicit in doping.
Four days after the Beijing closing ceremony, Moscow launched what it called a “special military operation” in Ukraine and a new wave of bans and sanctions from sports bodies followed.
There could also be continued scrutiny of Russian athletes’ welfare after a doping scandal in figure skating overshadowed the 2022 Olympics in Beijing.
Petrosian, the figure skater, is coached by Eteri Tutberidze, who coached Kamila Valieva, the then-15-year-old star skater whose legal battles over a positive drug test ended in a ban.
Valieva’s entourage was criticized by then-IOC president Thomas Bach at the 2022 Olympics for “tremendous coldness” in the skater’s treatment, without mentioning Tutberidze by name.
Petrosian is the latest in a series of young Tutberidze-trained skaters with spectacular, high-scoring, high-risk jumps. She’s one of the few female skaters in history to land a quadruple jump in competition, but her limited international experience as a neutral means she’s yet to do that outside of Russia.
___
Ellingworth reported from Duesseldorf, Germany. Vladimir Kondrashov in Terskol, Brian Melley in London and Graham Dunbar in Geneva contributed to this report.
___
AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
