Russian athletes can compete in the upcoming 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChange, South Korea, the IOC said on Tuesday — but the athletes will have to pass scrutiny, and they will compete under the title "Olympic Athlete from Russia (OAR)."

"They will compete with a uniform bearing this name and under the Olympic Flag," the IOC said. "The Olympic Anthem will be played in any ceremony."

IOC President Thomas Bach is pronouncing Russia's fate at a news conference that was scheduled for 1:30 p.m. ET. You can watch it live on YouTube.

The decision by the IOC's executive board follows last year's McLaren Report from the World Anti-Doping Agency, which confirmed that Russia's Olympics program had engaged in an "institutional conspiracy" to beat the system that included using a "mouse hole" to swap out athletes' drug-tainted samples for clean ones. The investigation was led by Canadian law professor Richard McLaren.

Russian officials have refused to acknowledge the scope and depth of the findings about the country's Olympic teams, saying that the problems were limited to individual athletes. Russian President Vladimir Putin has called the doping charges against Russia "a dangerous return to this policy of letting politics interfere with sport."
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-...espread-doping