Skiing’s international governing body on Tuesday banned all Russian and Belarusian athletes from participating in its events in the 2026 Winter Olympics in Northern Italy, to be hosted in Milan and in the Dolomite mountains.

The FIS (Fédération Internationale de Ski et de Snowboard) Council convened this Tuesday and voted not to facilitate the participation of athletes from Russia and Belarus as Individual Neutral Athletes (AIN) in FIS qualification events for the Milano-Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games and Paralympic Games,” the body announced on its website.

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While Russian alpine skiers have never been a force to be reckoned with on Olympic podiums, Russian athletes won almost a third of all cross-country skiing medals in the 2022 Games in Beijing.

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Russian hockey teams, on the other hand, have dominated podiums over the past half-century, having won world championships in 1993, 2008, 2009, 2012 and 2014. The Soviet Union’s hockey team won Olympic gold medals in 1956 (also in Cortina d’Ampezzo), and in 1964, 1968, 1972, 1974, 1984, and 1988.

However, the International Olympic Committee has already banned Russian teams from participating in Games under their own flag since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

The last time Italy hosed the Winter Olympics was in 2006, in Turin, where the Russian hockey team failed to reach even the semi-finals.

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An explosion damaged the Pskov-St. Petersburg railway, a key military route, halting Russian logistics and sparking a freight train fire, intelligence sources said.

Twenty years later, the skiing events of the Games will take place a little further east, in the storied Italian snow playground of Cortina d’Ampezzo, which last hosted the events in 1956.

Russian and Belarusian competitors in skiing and snowboarding from the two countries in fact have been banned from FIS events, such as World Cups and qualifying races, since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but they had hoped to participate under a neutral banner in the Games, which run from February 6-22, 2026.

“I think it’s the right decision,” Norway’s individual sprint Olympic champion Johannes Klaebo told television channel NRK about the move to ban Russians and Belarusians.

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“I’ve thought for a while that Russians should not be allowed to compete as long as the war in Ukraine continues,” the 28-year-old added.

FIS followed in the footsteps of the moves from the governing bodies of biathlon and luge, although ice skating authorities have decided to allow athletes from the two nations to attempt to qualify.