Tonga’s oiled flagbearer qualifies for Oly

Around 200 Russians to compete in Pyeongchang

WELLINGTON, Jan 21, (AFP): Pita Taufatofua, who captured global attention as the oiled and topless Tongan flagbearer at the Rio Olympics, has gone “to the end of the world” to qualify as Tonga’s first Winter Olympian.

After a year of training on roller skis in the heat of his tropical island homeland and at his Australian base in Brisbane, Taufatofua sealed his ticket to South Korea as a crosscountry skier after a handful of races on snow in the last possible qualifying round in Iceland.

The 34-year-old Taufatofua, who competed in taekwondo at the 2016 Summer Games, said he had been looking for a new challenge and the Winter Olympics became his target with cross country skiing “the hardest sport possible.”

Around 200 “clean” Russians will take part in the upcoming Winter Games, even though their country is suspended, the deputy prime minister responsible for sport, Vitaly Mutko, said on Saturday.

On Friday, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) panel responsible for deciding which Russian athletes will be spared the ban on their country for state-sponsored doping and allowed to compete in Pyeongchang, announced it had provisionally eliminated 111 athletes from a list of 500 nominated by the Russian Olympic committee.

The remaining athletes on the list must still meet further conditions, including “pre-Games checks and reanalysis of existing samples,” the panel said.

The IOC said that it will publish a final list of Russian athletes to go to Pyeongchang before January 27.

The Russian doping scandal led to a partial ban of the nation’s athletes at the Rio Olympics in 2016.

The IOC announced last month that Russia would be banned from the February 9-25 Winter Games over its state-orchestrated doping programme, but that clean Russian athletes would be allowed to compete under an Olympic flag.