PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — Technically, Russia did not win its first gold medal at these Winter Olympics on Friday.
Strictly speaking, Alina Zagitova, the 15-year-old victor in women’s figure skating, competed as a neutral “Olympic Athlete From Russia.” At a medal ceremony later Friday, she was to see the five-ringed Olympic flag raised instead of the Russian flag and to hear the Olympic hymn played instead of the Russian anthem.
But a nominal barring of Russia from the Olympics for operating a systematic doping scheme at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, was more of a semantic prohibition than a complete ban.