The New York Times Saturday No Russians? 2018 Games Would Lack A Little Spice By JERÉ LONGMAN MOSCOW -- The Olympics continue to spin on a wobbly axis, trapped in a vortex of corruption and doping. Who should be held responsible for Russia's systematic doping, which operated furtively at the 2014 Winter Games in the Black Sea resort of Sochi and was exposed by the same man who masterminded its shadowy effectiveness? Should Russia's Olympic committee be made to pay by a forced absence from the 2018 Winter Games in February in South Korea? Should all Russian athletes be barred from competing there? Some of them? How does one decide? And how much blame should the International Olympic Committee and the World Anti-Doping Agency share? Both have been widely criticized for not spending the necessary effort or money over the years to seriously address the use of performance-enhancing drugs. Such inadequacy has brought a corrosive truth: Suspicion of great achievement in Olympic sports is rampant. And the innocent find it almost impossible to prove their innocence. These are the sobering questions facing figure skating. With its alluring mix of athleticism and artistry, it is the centerpiece of the Winter Games. But as the sport's Olympic buildup began here this weekend on the Grand Prix circuit, anticipation was tempered by uncertainty. ''Olympics without a Russian team would look like a meal without salt and pepper,'' Alexei Mishin, a Russian coach who has produced three gold medals in men's skating, said here this week, at the Rostelecom Cup. He's right. Russia has the depth to sweep all three medals in women's skating at the 2018 Games. It would also be a favorite in the team skating competition. And Soviet and Russian pairs have won a gold medal at every Olympics but one since 1964. But the International Olympic Committee has not yet decided what, if any, punishment should be meted out to Russia for its state-sponsored use of banned substances, which involved as many as 1,000 athletes. Antidoping agencies from numerous countries, including the United States, have censured the Olympic committee for what they view as a refusal to hold Russia accountable. ''The I.O.C. has just continued to kick the can down the street, I think, with the hope that it just all goes away,'' Travis Tygart, the chief executive of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, said in a telephone interview. Denis Oswald, an I.O.C. delegate from Switzerland who is examining the breadth of Russian doping, recently told The Associated Press that he was being prudent, not indifferent. ''You can't just say they were in Sochi and they are Russian and they probably were doped,'' Oswald told The A.P. Several dozen antidoping agencies have called on the I.O.C. to bar Russia's Olympic committee from the 2018 Games. They jointly proposed that Russian athletes who could show that they have passed rigorous drug testing would be allowed to compete as independent, or neutral, athletes. Grigory Rodchenkov, Russia's doping mastermind turned whistle-blower, agreed with the antidoping experts in an article he wrote recently for The New York Times. He also said that Russian athletes should be sequestered in South Korea and subjected to stringent testing during the Games. ''Let's also be clear that doped athletes in Russia are, in many ways, victims, too,'' Rodchenkov wrote. ''In the Russian system, they do not have much choice but to cheat, even if some did so enthusiastically.'' In January, Samuel Auxier, the president of U.S. Figure Skating, called for Russia to be barred entirely from the 2018 Games. That seems unlikely, given that some Russian athletes were allowed to compete at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. The subject is complicated, and the petition for exclusion is not unanimous. ''I'm all about fair sport, clean sport,'' said Nathan Chen, the only American skater given a real chance to win a gold medal at the 2018 Games. But skaters understand imperfection, given that they are judged in a scoring system that is not always comprehensible or equitable. The Olympics are about unity, bringing the world together, Chen said, not keeping it apart. ''I would love to have them still in the sport,'' he said of the Russians. ''I think that would be weird not to have them.'' Chen's coach is Rafael Arutyunyan, an ethnic Armenian born in the former Soviet republic of Georgia. He coached for 18 years in Moscow before moving to the United States in 2001. ''You can't kick everybody out because somebody did something wrong,'' Arutyunyan said. He added: ''I spend all my life to train and I'm not allowed to compete? That's not fair.'' The 2018 Games approach even as the 2014 Games are not resolved. An investigation by the World Anti-Doping Agency, known as the McLaren Report, confirmed a clever, brazen doping scheme at the Sochi Olympics: Tainted urine samples were slipped through a so-called mouse hole in the drug lab to be laundered like drug money. A steroid concoction known as a Duchess cocktail was dissolved in alcohol -- whiskey for men, vermouth for women -- to enhance absorption and undermine detection. The McLaren investigation produced circumstantial evidence that raised questions about dozens of Russian athletes who competed at the last Winter Games, including Adelina Sotnikova, the Russian teenager who won the women's skating competition in Sochi. The questions center on whether Sotnikova and others were provided with a cocktail of anabolic steroids and had their incriminating urine samples destroyed. But there is no direct evidence of a drug violation, and Sotnikova has not been publicly accused. She was 17 at the time. Would she have been aware of Russia's scheme? Would she have had the power to say no? ''The problem is, it's not being followed up on,'' Tygart said. ''There's no evidence she's been interviewed. There's no evidence her coach has been talked to.'' Evgenia Medvedeva, already a two-time world skating champion at 17, would be Russia's prohibitive favorite to win gold in South Korea. Has she faced regular drug screening? Tygart asked. How often? The answer from her coach: at each competition and five or six times a year out of competition. This included a morning last week, the coach said, when Medvedeva was awakened at 5:30 a.m. to give a urine sample to a collector from the World Anti-Doping Agency. ''It would be really unfair'' to keep Medvedeva from the Olympics, said her coach, Eteri Tutberidze. ''She's not anything about taking doping. To take away four years, that's your life.'' Others look on warily. Brian Orser, a two-time Olympic silver medalist for Canada and coach of the 2014 men's gold medalist, Yuzuru Hanyu of Japan, watched a documentary about Russian doping the other night. ''It makes me angry,'' Orser said. At the same time, he added, ''any global event, if it's not all-inclusive, it just doesn't feel the same.'' Let the Russians in, he said, ''as long as it's clean.'' ''They have to live with it,'' Orser said, ''for a lot of years after these Olympics.'' URL: