Putin’s Public Enemy No1
He may look like a bank manager but this is the man at the centre of Russia’s state-sponsored doping programme, who, even amid the Trump spying furore, could this week become...
NONE of the most commonly published photographs of Grigory Rodchenkov suggest him as a fearsome adversary to the all-powerful and intimidating administration of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Aged 58, bespectacled, his top button is always undone, his moustache greying, and his air generally studious, whether demonstrating equipment or posing for a snap, awkwardly.
But from next Friday evening, UK time, it is not inconceivable that Rodchenkov will become public enemy No 1 in his homeland, even with the spy drama surrounding US President-elect Donald Trump. He already fears s for his life. He is about to o become one of the most famouss fugitives in the world.
Rodchenkov’s ‘crime’ has been n to tell the story of how he went nt from being one of the world’s s most respected anti-doping g advocates and research scienntists to being central to Russia’s s state-sponsored dopingg programme. He was the head of f Russia’s main anti-doping lab in n Moscow at the time.
It is an extraordinary tale, of f politics, intrigue and fear, of a failed suicide attempt and thenn mass deception, of cheating,g, betrayal — and now perhapss redemption.
When The Mail on Sunday y first revealed to the world in n July 2013 the doping and coverrup plot, and Rodchenkov’s role, e, we told how he and his sister were arrested and questioned over dealing performancee- enhancing drugs to top athletes in 2011. His sister, Marina, was jailed.
Rodchenkov himself, sources told us, was so traumatised about a secret criminal prosecution against him — and we obtained details of case number 44y-0173/2012, later ‘wiped’ from the system — that he tried to take his own life.
The MoS also obtained an articulate, detailed, persuasive 1,600-word appeal statement, written by Rodchenkov, explaining how he attempted suicide on February 23, 2011, and why he should be released from a psychiatric hospital after months of confinement.
He wasn’t merely released, he was sent back to oversee the ongoing doping corruption that would mar the 2013 World Athletics Championships in Moscow and the Sochi Olympic Games.
And in a 110-minute documentary, Icarus, due to have its world premiere on Friday morning, US time, at the Sundance Festival in Park City, Utah, Rodchenkov will be seen speaking about how it all happened, in his own words, for the first time.
The uncovering of Russia’s extensive drugs programme has rocked global sport in recent years, with ongoing calls for Russia to be kicked out of the Olympics indefinitely.
Putin vehemently denies the state helped more than 1,000 Russian sportspeople to cheat. But Rodchenkov knows they did — because he was at the heart of it. Sources close to the Kremlin say Putin and some of his most trusted ministers are hugely anxious at what Rodchenkov will say. His evidence won’t topple a regime but some heads may roll. Putin is concerned enough to have authorised a smear campaign against Rodchenkov that is well under way.
Recently, a Russian parliamentary committee alleged Rodchenkov was part of a foreign-funded criminal group intent on sullying Russia. The reality is the doping scheme was Russian, and assisted and protected by Russian bodies including the sports ministry, as documented by multiple whistleblowing Russian sportspeople and officials who spoke to this newspaper and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) from 2012 onward.
So many questions remain unanswered and anti-doping figures hope they will be addressed in Icarus. Why did Rodchenkov move to the dark side, for example?
Various sources, including exiled Russian anti-doping official and whistleblower Vitaly Stepanov, insist state involvement in pan-sport doping followed Russia’s poor showing at the 2010 Winter Olympics. After that, Stepanov told this newspaper, Putin’s ministers took active control of doping and manipulation of anti-doping.
A WADA-commissioned report by Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren found that Rodchenkov’s return to work at the lab happened ‘under the leadership and in the knowledge of’ Vitaly Mutko, who was Russia’s sports minister at the time. Mutko was recently appointed Russia’s deputy prime minister by Putin.
Sources in Russia and America, where Rodchenkov now lives, say he fears for his life. Two senior former colleagues from the world of Russian antidoping died in mysterious circumstances last February. The founding chairman of the Russian anti-doping agency, RUSADA, Vyacheslav Sinev, died from causes never made public, while the organisation’s recently departed head, Nikita Kamaev, 52 and reportedly healthy, died of a heart attack.
It is believed that Rodchenkov first came into contact with the US film-maker behind Icarus, Bryan Fogel, at some point in 2014, before any formal investigatory body had confirmed the Russian doping plot. It is believed Fogel sought the advice of Rodchenkov — still viewed by many back then as a respected, trusted, knowledgeable source on drugs in sport — for a film about what happens when an amateur athlete starts doping.
Fogel’s film, sources say, started off with that simple premise, with himself as a guinea pig. But then it took an extraordinary twist when Rodchenkov revealed to Fogel his role in the doping scandal, and asked for Fogel’s help to flee Russia.
The pair have been working together on Icarus since. It has the potential to rock Putin and send fresh shockwaves around the sporting world. In a letter to the president of the IOC, Thomas Bach, written jointly last year by Fogel and Rodchenkov, they request the assistance of Bach, a close friend of Putin, in anti-doping matters. They told Bach in writing that the Russian scandal has been ‘orchestrated at the highest levels of the Russian government’.
On Friday morning, Utah time, it is possible Rodchenkov, for the first time, will be seen looking into a camera and naming names. Figures at the Kremlin will be holding their breath, and plotting their response.
‘ON FRIDAY, RODCHENKOV MAY FINALLY BE SEEN TO NAME NAMES’