Appeals Could Let More Russian Athletes in Winter Games

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PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — Last-minute legal maneuvering by Russia could open the way for more of its athletes to compete in the Winter Olympics despite efforts to bar the country entirely from the Games over its state-sponsored doping at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

Russia has filed appeals with sports’ highest court to gain admission for a total of 47 athletes, including 15 who joined the case on Wednesday. The Court of Arbitration for Sport is expected to hold a hearing on those athletes’ cases on Thursday, the day preliminary competition begins at the Olympics ahead of the opening ceremony Friday evening.

A final ruling may be made as late as Friday morning.

The last-minute have appeals have caused widespread confusion and mistrust among athletes. But the International Olympic Committee, which had declared Russia could not compete as a country, said it is not to blame.

“The timing there was not in our hands,” the committee’s president, Thomas Bach, said in a news conference here Wednesday. “Studies had to be done, evidence had to be provided, fair hearings for the Russian athletes had to be offered.”

The I.O.C. in December barred Russia’s Olympic Committee from the Games and prohibited all insignia linked to the country. Yet in an effort to avoid punishing athletes who did not cheat, the I.O.C. has cleared more than 160 athletes it determined are clean to participate under the banner of “Olympic Athletes from Russia.”

Russia continues to deny the existence of a systematic doping program.

The situation unfolding this week in South Korea is reminiscent of two years ago when Russia also tried to use the court to restore athletes barred from the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

In Rio the I.O.C.’s leadership blamed the World Anti-Doping Agency for causing chaos by releasing the results of its investigation into Russia’s systematic doping plan so close to the start of the Games. In Pyeongchang on Wednesday, Bach blamed the Court of Arbitration for Sport for causing confusion and uncertainty last week when it upheld an appeal by 28 Russian athletes, judging that the evidence against them was “insufficient to establish that an antidoping rule violation was committed by the athletes concerned.”

The 15 appeals filed Wednesday were on behalf of 13 athletes and two coaches who contend the evidence against them is insufficient to warrant punishment.

The turmoil sparked a war of words within the I.O.C.’s usually clubby meeting room ahead of these Games. Richard Pound of Canada, the longest-serving I.O.C. member, warned his fellow members on Tuesday that the organization was in trouble.

“I believe that in the collective mind of a significant portion of the world, and among the athletes of the world, the IOC has not only failed to protect athletes, but has made it possible for cheating athletes to prevail against the clean athletes,” said Pound, the former president of WADA.

“We talk more than we walk,” Pound added. He said the athletes and the public “no longer have confidence that their interests are being protected. Our commitment to both is in serious doubt. With respect, I don’t think we can talk our way out of this problem.”

Pound’s intervention proved unpopular. He was berated by Argentina’s Gerardo Werthein before all but two members — Pound and Briton Adam Pengilly — voted in support of the I. O. C’s handling of the Russian doping affair.

In his news conference after the two-day meeting, Bach said members “cleared the air” and engaged in “lively debate.”

The organizers of the Paralympics have continued their hard line approach to Russia. The country has been barred from next month’s Paralympics in South Korea. Bach has taken a more conciliatory approach, favoring individual justice over collective punishment, despite describing Russia’s actions as an “unprecedented attack on the integrity of the Olympics.”

Some of the group of 15 Russian athletes who filed appeals Thursday are already in Korea in anticipation of being permitted to compete.

More than a dozen Russian reporters, photographers and cameramen flocked to the Yongpyong Ski Resort where the appeal hearings are being held. Lawyers representing both sides said very little, leaving the court’s secretary general, Matthieu Reeb, to defend it in the face of criticism from Bach and others.

Bach tried to focus attention on what many consider to be a dramatic gesture of reconciliation, the fact athletes from North and South Korea will march together in the opening ceremony

and will field a joint women’s ice hockey team. “It will be the moment, the most emotional moment,” Bach said.