IOC rejects request for Russian invites to Games

The International Olympic Committee rejected a request Monday to invite 15 Russians to the Pyeongchang Winter Games just days after the athletes’ doping bans were overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

The 13 active athletes and two retired athletes working in support roles were among 28 athletes whose bans were overturned Thursday by CAS. The ban on 11 other Russians was upheld.

Russia Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev denounced the IOC move as “shameful.”

“This decision is unfair, unlawful, amoral and politically charged,” Medvedev saidon Facebook.

The IOC said as-yet unpublished new evidence — not examined in the CAS process — gave rise to new doping suspicions about the 15 Russians. The Kremlin argued the CAS decision meant the 15should be treated as clean.

“We very much regret it. We expected that the CAS decision would dispel all suspicions against the athletes,” Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. “We’re convinced that the CAS ruling has proved that such suspicions had no grounds.”

In a statement, the IOC said part of its ruling was because “the full reasoning for these decisions had not been made public” by CAS. “The decision of the CAS had not lifted the suspicion of doping, or given the panel sufficient confidence to recommend ... those 13 athletes could be considered as clean.”

The IOC said the two coaches “should not be considered for an invitation” because of previous evidence available to the IOC.

Hockey language

North and South Korea face a widening linguistic divide after 70 years of division, and that is a challenge for the rivals’ first joint Olympic team as it prepares for the Pyeongchang Winter Games.

Sarah Murray, a Canadian who is the coach of the joint women’s hockey team, said her squad has made a threepage dictionary that translates key hockey terms from English into South Korean and then into North Korean for better communication among players and herself.

“In North Korean, there are no English words so everything is totally different. So we actually made a dictionary, English to Korean to North Korean,” she said.

South Korea has incorporated many English words and phrases into its language, while North Korean has eliminated words with foreign origins and created homegrown substitutes.

First sign reconciling

A 23-member advance team of North Koreans, mostly sound, lighting and other technicians, arrived Monday in South Korea to prepare for the North’s participation in Olympics, officials said.