Nikolai Panin-Kolomenkin, the man who won gold in 1908, explained it in his memoirs: “Almost every foreign country had a national Olympic committee that provided constant cooperation among the different sports organizations of their countries. But in Russia… we had only separate athletes at the 1908 Olympics who were going there with the support of their clubs, or just on their own.”

No wonder there were just six athletes from Russia that year! Also, some Russian athletes could have confused the two calendars and failed to participate. But it would be wrong to say that the Russian national team was late for the Olympics, simply because there was no official Russian national team in 1908.

I feel like that's legitimate to point out, but also that it doesn't really dispute the core idea of the meme. I'm looking at a few respectable-looking books that reference the matter, I'll check them out (tomorrow, not tonight, 'tis late) and follow their source citations to see if I can dig deeper.