Addressing dozens of “Olympic Athletes from Russia” wearing their neutral grey and red uniforms, Putin said the country would do everything to support the athletes left out of the Games.
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The 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics, set to run from February 9 to 25, will be the largest Winter Olympics in history, with 2,925 athletes from 92 nations set to participate in 15 sports.
The South Korean skiers, who won’t be competing in the Winter Games, will attend a two-day training session with North Korean athletes as part of the two Koreas’ pre-Olympic exchanges.
The IOC decided last month to ban Russian Federation from competing in PyeongChang as part of a wide range of sanctions against the country’s “systemic manipulation of the anti-doping system”.
A total of 42 Russian athletes appealed to CAS against the bans imposed by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in connection with doping practices at the Sochi 2014 Games.
Graf said that her decision did not mean she was retiring.
Russian athletes, present at the meeting, were equally adamant about the accusations.
Despite its decision to send athletes, North Korea announced it would celebrate the founding of its military on February 8, an event generally marked with a large military parade displaying weapons like missile launchers.
“The 5G Exhibition Hall, operated by KT during the PyeongChang Olympics, will serve as an opportunity to experience a 5G future in advance”, said KT Chairman Hwang Chang-gyu. “This will always go on because unfortunately, it seems that it’s some kind of human nature that whenever you have people in competition with each other, some are ready to take illegal advantage”.
Many South Koreans have complained that the unified women’s hockey team – the only such joint team to be formed – was unfair to the South Korean players.
“The Olympic Games is like a birthday party for the I.O.C.; they invite whoever they want”, Mr. Kovalchuk said before the event.
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The host team of South Korea is also set to have a record number of 144 athletes at the winter event.
