GANGNEUNG, South Korea — The Winter Olympics close on Sunday, and Russia, with its sporting reputation battered by systematic doping and its competitive ranks thinned by banned athletes, has yet to win a gold medal.
That is widely expected to change by Friday at the latest, when the Russian figure skaters and training partners — Alina Zagitova, 15, and Evgenia Medvedeva, 18 — will be consensus choices to win gold and silver in the women’s competition.
Nominally, Russia was barred from these Games after operating a doping scheme at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia. But 169 individual athletes were permitted to compete as neutrals as “Olympic Athletes from Russia.