The Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games medal table shows at the top the names of countries that usually compete for the top positions, such as the United States, China, Great Britain and the host, Japan. But in third place at the Summer Olympics one name immediately jumped out at me: ROC .
At the end of the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, the ROC was in third place in the general medal table with a total of 71 medals : 20 gold, 28 silver and 23 bronze. But what country is ROC?
Russian athletes were banned from competing in the Tokyo Olympics under their flag and anthem and instead are identified as “ROC” athletes — the acronym for the Russian Olympic Committee — after a series of doping scandals that They rocked the sport worldwide.
In addition to not being able to be identified by the name of their country, instead of having their anthem played on the podium, the Russian gold medalists in Tokyo and at the Beijing Winter Olympics this year will hear music by composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky.
For the 2022 Beijing Olympics, the ROC will have 212 athletes (103 women and 109 men) competing in 15 disciplines.
The ban is intended to penalize Moscow for providing world anti-doping authorities with manipulated lab data that could have helped identify doping cheaters.
The original four-year ban, imposed by the World Anti- Doping Agency (WADA), was announced in 2019, although a year later the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) cut it in half.
Previously, many Russian athletes were banned from the last two Olympics and the country’s flag was banned from the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Games as a punishment for state-sponsored doping at the 2014 Sochi Games.
Russia has acknowledged shortcomings in its enforcement of anti-doping policies, but denies running a state-sponsored doping program.