Taking the piss WHEN Grigory Rodchenkov, the erstwhile director of Russia’s anti-doping lab, confessed that he had helped run a state-directed doping programme during the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, his story sounded fanciful. He said he had served athletes steroid-spiked cocktails mixed with cognac and vermouth, while Russia’s secret police, the Federal Security Service (FSB), had cracked the supposedly foolproof urine-sample bottles used in international competition. The sports ministry, Mr Rodchenkov claimed, fed lab officials lists of athletes to be protected; their drug-laced samples were swapped for clean ones through a hole in the wall of the Sochi testing facility.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) dispatched a team to investigate. This week, the results came back positive: Mr Rodchenkov’s story was true. The report, the latest in a string of WADA investigations of Russian sport, details a co-ordinated government-run doping effort. Since 2011 the Moscow anti-doping laboratory, in concert with the sports ministry, had used a technique called “the disappearing positive” to cover up for dirty athletes; the FSB…
