A women's hockey player for the "Olympic Athletes from Russia" team trains in Gangneung. -It is all a far cry from four years ago, when Russia hosted the Sochi Winter Olympics and the country soared to the top of the medals table.For Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had staked his personal reputation on the Games, and the country's 144 million people, it was an immensely proud moment.But it is that Olympics which helped propel Russia to where they are today at the Olympics: banned and marginalised, a pariah.Central to blowing the lid on widespread doping across Russian sport was whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov, the former head of Russia's anti-doping lab.Rodchenkov, who alleged that Putin personally ordered the doping programme, fled to the United States in 2016 in fear of his life. Putin later ridiculed his claims and called him "an idiot".That same year, a bombshell report by Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren on behalf of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) accused Moscow of widespread state-sponsored doping that reached its climax at Sochi.There, said the report, Russian secret agents were part of an elaborate plot to help the country's athletes cheat their way to gold.The nefarious scheme included swapping tainted urine samples for clean ones using a "mousehole" in the Sochi laboratory wall.Russia's track and field athletes were consequently banned from the 2016 Rio Olympics and the whole team was barred from the Paralympics. They remain suspended from the Pyeongchang Paralympics.- What has Russia said? "This decision is unfair, unlawful, amoral and politically charged," he wrote on Facebook, asserting that "its goal is to do political damage to Russia".- What comes next?

Source: Egypt Today February 07, 2018 10:07 UTC