REVEALED The meeting that turned London 2012 into Olympics sabotaged by Russian drugs cheat
THE 2012 London Olympics was supposed to be one of the proudest, most uplifting events in the history of British sport. It will be remembered as the Games that began with Danny Boyle’s lauded opening ceremony and ended with Team GB winning 65 medals, 29 of them gold, a 104-year high.
‘Super Saturday’ was the most successful single day for Britain at any Olympics since 1908, producing six golds including titles for Jess Ennis-Hill, Greg Rutherford and Mo Farah.
Yet London 2012 would later be described, in an official report into state-supported Russian doping, as ‘sabotaged by athletes who should have not been competing’.
And this came about because of an invitation sent by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), on behalf of the London organisers, to a Russian anti-doping official. The acceptance of that invitation gave the official privileged access to the nerve centre of London’s anti-doping lab, allowing him help his compatriots cheat in 2012 and beyond.
Access to the lab meant he gained knowledge of a top-secret new test for human growth hormone, giving Russia insight to circumvent it.
The story of former Moscow lab boss Grigory Rodchenkov is known, and infamous.
As The Mail on Sunday first revealed in 2013, he was central to Russia’s multi-sport, statesupported doping and cover-up programme.
He had to flee Russia in 2015 and fears for his life, somewhere inside the USA’s witness protection programme.
A documentary about his experience, Icarus, had a premiere in January. But the film does not get a global general release until August 4, when it begins to air on Netflix.
To say it feels like a Cold War thriller underplays the intrigue. And the IOC invitation episode — delivered to Rodchenkov at a Moscow psychiatric hospital after he tried to take his own life — is staggering.
London 2012, in retrospect, has become a Games of disgrace for Russia. They ended the event with 82 medals (24 gold) and already 13 have been stripped (four gold) for subsequent revelations of doping.
Mariya Savinova (800m), Yuliya Zaripova (steeplechase), Sergey Kirdyapkin (50km walk) and Tatyana Lysenko (hammer) have lost golds. Major names from other sports remain under scrutiny.
When the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) concluded in late 2015 that London 2012 had been ‘sabotaged’, Lord Coe, the organiser of those Games and then head of the IAAF, was stunned.
Senior anti-doping bosses have been staggered anew at the revelations in
Icarus. One senior antidoping official, who worked closely with London 2012, said: ‘For three years before the London Olympics, people had been working to create a new test for human growth hormone which was put in place a few weeks before the Games.
‘It is astonishing and disheartening that other trusted anti-doping officials who were invited to the London lab were taking that information and using it to devise doping programmes.’
Rodchenkov’s suicide attempt came after he was arrested and interrogated for alleged dealing in performance-enhancing drugs.
The knife went deep into his chest and scraped his heart. His wife found him in the bath and he had life-saving surgery before being sent to one clinic where he was heavily drugged for a week, and a second where he recovered from his depressive illness. The second, he says in Icarus, was ‘for sadists, the totally worst-ofthe-worst criminals.’
‘I got better,’ he says. ‘The funny thing was they allowed me to use my computer, so I was working from the psychiatry clinic (still) like the head of the laboratory,
advising the Russian team (on doping matters).
‘I received from the International Olympic Committee an invitation to the 2012 Olympic Games, being the director (of the Moscow lab). WADA said: “If it’s not Rodchenkov, then we don’t see in Russia any other candidate than him”.’
The invitation proved to be Rodchenkov’s get-out-of-jail card. He says he convinced the Russian sports minister at the time, Vitaly Mutko, that going to London and visiting the 2012 Games lab would give him, and Russia, intelligence to allow them to cheat the system. He says in
Icarus: ‘You can imagine how vital information from the London lab is for the (Russian) team.
‘Without this, all Russian doping situation will be collapsed. Mutko understood this.’ Bryan Fogel is taking Rodchenkov through his role in Russia’s doping programme at this point in the movie. He asks who took care of Rodchenkov’s release. He asks: ‘Who got the charges dropped?’ Rodchenkov replies: ‘(Vladimir) Putin. It’s my redemption. Success in Sochi instead of being in prison.’ Rodchenkov went to London, helped to ‘sabotage’ those Games, and then returned to begin plotting how to dope some of his nation’s best Winter Games athletes in Sochi. And this all went ahead because an invite from the IOC to London got him back to work.