Yet the feeling of Russian pride here is unmistakable. A giant nesting doll plastered onto a wall identifies the entrance, and a flight of stairs leads into a main room filled with memorabilia evoking Russian Olympic success and culture. Guests can grab tea from large samovars before viewing an exhibit of jerseys and medals from the country’s hockey successes, dating to the Soviet period when the Red Machine ruled.
For a country that continues to receive international condemnation for a systematic, yearslong doping conspiracy, Russia isn’t intent on keeping a low profile.
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Tariq Panja/The New York Times
“Russia is a full participant in the Olympic Games, and Russia can show its sporting power,” the country’s ambassador to Korea, Alexander Timonin, said when opening the celebration venue Friday. “We believe in our athletes, we are proud of them, and we hope that they can achieve their very best sporting results and bring glory to our great motherland.”
The nationalist fervor is at odds with the demands issued by the I.O.C., which told Russia that if its delegation behaved, it would get its flag back for the closing ceremony on Feb. 25. Yet Russia continues to dispute the existence of a doping conspiracy, and the overt display of Olympic success seems to be at odds with the I.O.C.’s request for a more contrite posture.
The I.O.C said it was monitoring events at the facility to ensure it complied with the ban issued to Russia’s Olympic committee.
The Sports House “is a hospitality venue that is available to all sports fans to celebrate the Olympic Winter Games Pyeongchang 2018,” the I.OC. said in a statement. “It is run by a commercial third party, and the I.O.C. has made the operator aware of the conduct guidelines.”
Elistratov dressed in a blue and white outfit with the letters OAR, for Olympic Athletes of Russia, on his right breast pocket as he skated to a third-place finish. He added an understated gray track top for the medal ceremony. Russian fans in the stands waved their nation’s tricolor flag, the I.O.C.’s ban isn’t extended to them.
Elistratov dedicated his victory to the scores of athletes banned from the Olympics for their connection to the doping scheme, a group that includes Viktor Ahn, the Korean-born short-track speedskater who has won six Olympic gold medals.
After the race, Elistratov urged his countrymen and women to “fight to the end and never give in.”
“Under all these circumstances, the medal is like a gold one to me,” he said. “Everyone was encouraging me. They would say, ‘Listen to nobody and go ahead to the end.’”
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Felipe Dana/Associated Press
Others have taken to social media to express patriotic displays of support and contempt for the I.O.C. They include the two-time pole vault gold medalist and current member of the I.O.C.’s Athletes Commission Yelena Isinbayeva. On Instagram, she vowed that even though the team was depleted, Russia would prosper in Pyeongchang because “Russians become invincible in anger.”
At Sports House, there was similar emotion. “Our hearts are broken for the athletes not here,” said a young staff member who traveled from Moscow earlier this week.
Between events that were broadcast on a giant screen beaming in a live transmission of the Games from Russian state television, a party host mounted an elevated stage to lead the few guests present to dance along to upbeat tracks, including Will Smith’s “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It.” On the other side of the room, there were multiple framed photographs of Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin. The Russian leader has brushed off the doping scandal as an invention of the United States to destabilize his efforts at re-election later this year.
Olympic houses, like Russia’s, are a Games tradition and have become increasingly elaborate over the years. At the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Summer Games, the Netherlands created a giant dance floor that would mechanically cut away to form a runway for their medal winners to parade in front of hundreds of adoring fans. The venues also act as a refuge for athletes to spend downtime with friends and family members.
Sports House — where the slogan “Russia in My Heart” is emblazoned in large type across temporary red-colored walls — won’t be able to host athletes because of the ban, according to an official there. The I.O.C has limited patriotic displays by Russian athletes, permitting them to keep flags inside their bedrooms in the athletes’ village.
Fans, though, are able to drape themselves with whatever they like. A concession store offers an array of products from wrist bands, woolly hats and gloves to hockey jerseys bearing the two-headed eagle emblem of the Russian state on each shoulder and the “Russia in My Heart” slogan written in Russian letters.
The special designation assigned to Russia by the I.O.C has also spawned its own clothing line, with a Moscow-based company DDVB offering a product range of patriotic products all featuring the letters O.A.R.
One design includes a stencil of a bear roaring the letters “OARRRR” and a T-shirt with the slogan, “Truth is OAR Drug.”
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