State-run doping fuelled Russia’s Sochi medal haul, insider says
Substitution of urine samples let dozens of Olympians evade detection, whistleblower alleges
LOS ANGELES— Dozens of Russian athletes at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, including at least 15 medal winners, were part of a state-run doping program that was meticulously planned for years to ensure dominance at the Games, according to the director of the country’s antidoping laboratory at the time.
The director, Grigory Rodchenkov, who ran the laboratory that handled testing for thousands of Olympians, said he developed a three-drug cocktail of banned substances that he mixed with liquor and gave to dozens of Russian athletes, helping to facilitate one of the most elaborate — and successful — doping ploys in sports history.
It involved some of Russia’s biggest stars of the Games, including14 members of its cross-country ski team and two veteran bobsledders who won two golds.
In a dark-of-night operation, Russian anti-doping experts and members of the intelligence services replaced urine samples tainted by performance-enhancing drugs with clean urine collected months earlier, Rodchenkov said.
The manoeuvre involved somehow breaking into the supposedly tamper-proof bottles that are the standard at international competitions. For hours each night, they worked in a shadow laboratory lit by a single lamp, passing bottles of urine through a hand-size hole in the wall, to be ready for testing the next day, Rodchenkov said.
By the end of the Games, he estimated, as many as 100 dirty urine samples were expunged.
None of the athletes was caught doping. More important, Russia won the most medals of the Games, easily surpassing its main rival, the United States.
“People are celebrating Olympic champion winners, but we are sitting crazy and replacing their urine,” Rodchenkov said. “Can you imagine how Olympic sport is organized?”
The IOC “would not hesitate” to retest drug samples from the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi if there is evidence that doping controls were manipulated, according to the Olympic body’s medical director.
“The IOC will follow up any issues very carefully,” medical director Dr. Richard Budgett told The Associated Press. “We did have international experts in the lab monitoring all the testing going on. We made it as secure as we could.”
Budgett said the International Olympic Committee has stored all doping samples from Sochi at its lab in Lausanne, Switzerland. The IOC retains Olympic samples for 10 years to allow for reanalysis with improved testing methods.
After the New York Times asked Russian officials to respond to the claims, Russia’s sports minister, Vitaly Mutko, released a statement calling the revelations “a continuation of the information attack on Russian sport.”
Rodchenkov laid out the details of the operation over three days of interviews that were arranged by an American filmmaker, Bryan Fogel, who is working on a documentary that involves Rodchenkov.
Rodchenkov’s account could not be independently verified, but it was consistent with the broad findings of a report published last year by the World Anti-Doping Agency. He provided the Times with emails detailing doping efforts and a spreadsheet he said was sent to him by the sports ministry before the Sochi Games. It named the athletes involved in the doping program. Rodchenkov described his own work at Sochi as a “strong accomplishment,” the apex of a decade-long effort to perfect Russia’s doping strategy at international competitions.
In November, the World Anti-Doping Agency identified Rodchenkov as the linchpin in what it described as an extensive state-sponsored doping program in Russia, accusing him of extorting money from athletes — the only accusation he denies — as well as covering up positive drug tests and destroying hundreds of urine samples. After the report came out, Rodchenkov said, Russian officials forced him to resign. Fearing for his safety, he moved to Los Angeles, with the help of Fogel.
Back in Russia, two of Rodchenkov’s close colleagues died unexpectedly in February, within weeks of each other; both were former antidoping officials, one who resigned soon after Rodchenkov fled the country. The November report was primarily focused on track and field, but Rodchenkov described the whole spectrum of Russian sport as tainted by banned substances.
Admitting to more than what WADA investigators accused him of, he said it was not hundreds of urine samples that he destroyed but rather several thousand, in last-ditch efforts to mask the extent of the country’s doping.
In November, in the wake of the WADA report, the country was provisionally suspended from international track and field competition; in the coming weeks, leaders of the sport’s global governing body will decide whether to lift a ban ahead of this summer’s Olympics.