ISU announced the list of Russian athletes who will participate in the 2026 Winter Olympics qualifiers, and Petro is aiming for the gold medal

The list of Russian and Belarusian athletes participating in the qualifiers for the 2026 Milan-Cortina d'Ampezzo Winter Olympics has been announced. On the 14th, Beijing time, the International Skating Union (ISU) approved 4 figure skaters and 18 speed skaters from Russia and 6 figure skaters and 7 speed skaters from Belarus to participate in the Winter Olympics qualifiers. They will compete as Individual Neutral Athletes (AIN) in the qualifiers to qualify for the Winter Olympics.

Russian women's figure skater Adelia Petrosyan

Fellow 17-year-old Russian players Adlia Petrosyan and Alina Gorbacheva will compete in the women's singles figure skating Olympic qualifiers. Petrosyan is a quadruple jumper who excels at the top of the final race of this year's Russian domestic championships with an overall score of 262.92 points (women's singles short program + free skate). Gorbacheva was third overall with 223.92 points.

The two athletes will compete in the qualifiers for next year's Winter Olympics in Beijing in September. Skaters from Russia and Belarus will only get one ticket to each event at next year's Winter Olympics, so Petrosyan is very likely to compete. Russia is a world powerhouse in figure skating, winning the women's singles gold medal in figure skating at three consecutive Winter Olympics, from Sochi 2014 to Beijing 2022. Among them, at the Sochi Winter Olympics, Adelina Sotnikova defeated Kim Yuna to win the gold medal after a controversial decision, and at PyeongChang 2018, Alina Zagitova came out on top. At the Beijing Winter Olympics, Anna Shcherbakova took advantage of the momentum to win the gold medal due to Kamila Valieva's doping problem.

In the men's singles, Russia's Petel Gummenik and Vladislav Dicki will compete in the Olympic qualifiers. There are no Russian skaters in ice dancing or pairs skating.

The ISU banned Russian athletes from invading Ukraine and Belarusian athletes who collaborated with them from participating in international competitions after March 2022 and stripped the two countries of the right to host international competitions. But the ISU's tone has changed with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) proposing in March 2023 new criteria for restricting Russian and Belarusian athletes from participating in international competitions as individual neutrals. The ISU announced in December that it would allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to participate in the 2026 Winter Olympics qualifiers as AIN, and asked the ice associations of the two countries to submit a list of participants.