Sports Day in Russia

Sports played a major role in the Soviet state in the post-World War II period. The most popular sport in Russia is soccer.

The Soviet Union (USSR) competed in the Olympic Games for the first time at the 1952 Summer Olympics. Soviet and later Russian athletes never finished below fourth place in the number of gold and total medals collected at the Summer Olympics in which they competed. Russia has the most medals stripped for doping violations (51), the most of any country, four times the number of the runner-up, and nearly a third of the global total. The Russian team was partially banned from the 2016 Rio Olympics and 2018 Winter Olympics due to the state-sponsored doping scandal. Russian athletes were allowed to participate at the 2018 Olympics under a neutral flag with a name "Olympic Athletes from Russia".