Sport in Russia

• 1. Introduction

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  Sport in Russia carries a weight that goes beyond competition. A Yandex search analysis found that association football drew between five and ten million requests, placing it at the top of the most popular sports in Russia. Yet a survey conducted in 2018 told a different story: ice hockey led all sports in that poll, with 50.9 percent of Russians aged 12 to 64 saying they followed it. The researchers noted a catch. The survey was conducted one month after the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, which almost certainly inflated the numbers for winter sports. The question of what Russia truly loves in sport turns out to be complicated. What follows is a portrait of a country whose sporting identity spans ancient martial traditions and Formula One circuits, whose athletes have sat at the top of global rankings and whose national bodies have been suspended by nearly every major international federation. The story of how Russia came to hold more stripped doping medals than any other country on earth runs through all of it.

• 2. Winter Obsessions

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  Bandy carries a designation that no other Russian sport can claim. It is the only sport to enjoy the patronage of the Russian Orthodox Church. Known informally as Russian hockey, it is considered a national sport, and one survey placed it as the third most popular sport in the country. The Soviet national team won every single Bandy World Championship from the first tournament in 1957 through 1979. The Federation of International Bandy itself was founded in 1955 by the Soviet Union and three Nordic countries. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and the United States all announced they would not take part in the men's World Championship that had been scheduled to be held in Russia, and the event was cancelled on the 1st of March 2022.

  Figure skating built its own dynasty on ice. At every Winter Olympics from 1964 through 2006, a Soviet or Russian pair won gold in pairs skating. That streak ended in 2010 when a Chinese pair took the title. A Russian pair returned to gold at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. The 2018 Mediascope survey placed figure skating second in popularity among Russians, with 39.2 percent saying they followed it.

  Biathlon sits at the top of winter sports in terms of overall polls and television viewership across the winter season, and Russia has collected both Olympic and World medals in the discipline.

• 3. Chess and Combat

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  Mikhail Botvinnik won the 1948 World Chess Championship and in doing so launched an era of Soviet dominance in the game that shaped the sport for decades. Chess became a favorite pastime in Russia, and the post-war period from 1945 onward saw Russian players consistently lead the world. In the 1990s, Kasparov dominated most of the tournaments he entered and reached a then-record rating of 2851 on the July 1999 list. By 2017-25 of the world's top 100 chess players were Russian.

  Sambo, meanwhile, offers a glimpse into a combat tradition that was born inside the Soviet Union. The word is an acronym of samozashchita bez oruzhiya, which translates directly as self-defence without weapons. It was created in the Russian SFSR by Viktor Spiridonov and Vasili Oshchepkov. Combat Sambo allows strikes, ground strikes, wrestling, and submissions, placing it close in structure to mixed martial arts. Fedor Emelianenko and Khabib Nurmagomedov, both considered among the greatest MMA fighters of all time, are former Sambo competitors.

  MMA itself has grown into a popular sport in Russia, with Emelianenko widely considered the greatest of all time in the sport. Islam Makhachev, Khamzat Chimaev, Petr Yan, and Alexey Oleynik are among the other Russian fighters the source identifies as prominent names in international competition.

• 4. Tennis and Gymnastics

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  Maria Sharapova won five Grand Slam titles during her career. Anastasia Myskina won the 2004 French Open, and at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Russia swept the women's tennis podium: Elena Dementieva took gold, Dinara Safina took silver, and Vera Zvonareva took bronze. The Russian Federation won the Fed Cup four times, in 2004, 2005, 2007, and 2008. On the men's side, Yevgeny Kafelnikov won the 1996 French Open and the 1999 Australian Open, and claimed a gold medal at the 2000 Olympic Games. Marat Safin won the US Open in 2000 and the 2005 Australian Open. Daniil Medvedev briefly reached the world number one ranking in early 2022 and won the 2021 US Open against Novak Djokovic.

  Before the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, the Soviet women's gymnastics squad won all team titles at the World Championships and the Summer Olympics, with three exceptions: the 1984 Olympics, which they did not attend, and the 1966, 1979, and 1987 World Championships. Rhythmic gymnastics is particularly popular in Russia today. Irina Viner teaches at the Gazprom School in Novogorsk, Moscow, which also serves as the base for the Russian national team. Russia's Alexander Karelin won the Greco-Roman wrestling gold medal at three consecutive Olympics and was named the greatest Greco-Roman wrestler of the 20th century by the International Federation of Associated Wrestling Styles.

• 5. Motorsport's Brief Rise

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  Vitaly Petrov became Russia's first Formula One driver in 2010, driving for Renault and later Caterham. He finished third at the 2011 Australian Grand Prix. Daniil Kvyat made his F1 debut in 2014 and took second place at the 2015 Hungarian Grand Prix. The Russian Grand Prix joined the Formula One calendar for the 2014 season, held at the Sochi Autodrom. Sergey Sirotkin joined the grid in 2018 but did not continue after that season, and Nikita Mazepin became the fourth Russian driver to compete in Formula 1 when he raced for the Haas team in the 2021 championship as a neutral competitor due to the doping scandal.

  Russian car manufacturer Lada, known domestically as AvtoVAZ, entered the World Touring Car Championship in 2008 with Russian Bears Motorsport. Former World Touring Car Champion Robert Huff gave Lada their first WTCC win at the 2014 Beijing round. In rallycross, Timur Timerzyanov won the FIA European Rallycross Championship in 2012 and again in 2013. The Russian Grand Prix at the Sochi Autodrom was scheduled for 2022, but after the invasion of Ukraine the FIA cancelled the race. Haas dismissed Mazepin ahead of the first race of that season following sanctions that targeted Uralkali, a company owned by his father.

• 6. The Doping Reckoning

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  Russia holds a record that no other country can match. It has had 51 medals stripped for doping violations, which is four times the number of the runner-up and nearly a third of the global total. The Soviet Union competed in its first Olympic Games at the 1952 Summer Olympics, and Soviet and later Russian athletes never finished below fourth place in the gold and total medal count at Summer Olympics where they competed. That record of excellence and the doping record exist side by side.

  The Russian team was partially banned from the 2016 Rio Olympics and the 2018 Winter Olympics. At the 2018 Games, Russian athletes who were permitted to compete did so under the name Olympic Athletes from Russia and carried no national symbols. Russia was banned from the 2017 and 2019 World Athletics Championships, and from 2022 onward World Athletics banned all Russian athletes, support personnel, and officials from World Athletics Series events.

  On the 12th of October 2023, the International Olympic Committee announced the immediate suspension of the Russian Olympic Committee after it unilaterally transferred the national Olympic committees of four Ukrainian regions to its own jurisdiction: Donetsk Oblast, Luhansk Oblast, Kherson Oblast, and Zaporizhzhia Oblast. The ROC president said at the time, in response to a question about the move, "I don't see any difficulties here." The IOC ruled that the transfer violated the territorial integrity of the National Olympic Committee of Ukraine. The IOC also withdrew the Olympic Order from Vladimir Putin and stated it would decide separately whether individual Russian passport holders could compete as neutrals at the Paris 2024 Olympics and the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Games.

• 7. Bans Across Every Sport

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  After the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, international sports federations acted federation by federation. FIFA and UEFA suspended Russian football participation on the 28th of February 2022, which blocked Russia from the Qatar 2022 World Cup. The Russian Football Union appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, which upheld the ban. EuroLeague suspended CSKA Moscow, UNICS Kazan, and Zenit St. Petersburg from basketball competition. EuroLeague Women suspended UMMC Ekaterinburg, Dynamo Kursk, and MBA Moscow. The National Basketball Association suspended all business activities in Russia, including broadcasts.

  The International Judo Federation removed Putin as its Honorary President and ambassador. Putin, a judo enthusiast, had been associated with the federation as its profile in Russia grew. The IJF also removed Arkady Rotenberg from its executive committee. In boxing, the International Boxing Association was expelled from the Olympic Movement in June 2023 after 69 IOC members backed the proposal at an Extraordinary Session. Only one member voted against the expulsion.

  In fencing, the Russian FIE President Alisher Usmanov stepped down after the European Union imposed economic sanctions on him. Stanislav Pozdnyakov, president of the Russian Olympic Committee, was removed from his position as European Fencing Confederation president by a unanimous vote of no confidence in March 2022. Russian Olympian Sergey Bida, a silver medal winner in épée, emigrated to the United States in 2023 along with his wife Violetta Khrapina Bida, joining junior world sabre champion Konstantin Lokhanov as the second and third Russian Olympian fencers to make that move. The Russian Fencing Federation responded in July 2023 by announcing the dismissal of national épée team head coach Alexander Glazunov.