High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Athletes from Belarus began their Olympic participation at the 1952 Summer Games in Helsinki, Finland as part of the Soviet Union (IOC code: URS). After the Soviet Union disbanded in 1991, Belarus, along with four of the other fourteen former Soviet republics, competed in the 1992 Winter Olympics (held in Albertville, France) as the Unified Team. Later in 1992, eleven republics joined Belarus to compete as the Unified Team at the Summer Games in Barcelona, Spain. Two years later, Belarus competed for the first time as an independent nation in the 1994 Winter Olympics, held in Lillehammer, Norway. From 1952 until the 2006 Olympic Games in Turin, Italy, 168 Belarusian athletes won 200 medals either as part of the Soviet Union or as independent Belarus.