Ingredients of a spy thriller

LAUSANNE • The Russian doping scandalboasted all the seedy ingredients of a spy novel with whistle-blowers, drug cocktails and undercover chicanery.

In the early days of the Russian state-sponsored doping scandal, with German broadcaster channel ARD at the fore of the investigation, key information came from Russian middle-distance runner Yuliya Stepanova and her husband Vitaly, the former controller of Rusada, the country's anti-doping agency.

But the scandal ramped up in 2016 when scientist Grigory Rodchenkov, forced to resign from the Moscow anti-doping laboratory which he had headed since 2006, took refuge in the United States and piled on the revelations.

A colourful character, the troubled mastermind turned informant confessed to having perfected the doping of Russian athletes.

Assessing his "credibility" was one of the challenges of the investigation entrusted in 2016 by World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) to Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren, especially as Rodchenkov had a troubled and controversial past.

Rodchenkov was the brains behind the "Duchess cocktail" of steroids, comprising oxandrolone, methenolone and trenbolone.

Athletes would use the mixture to allow the ingestion of drugs orally rather than through injection. That way, it optimised the effectiveness of the drugs while limiting the risks of detection.

Male athletes had to dilute the three substances in Chivas Regal whisky, gargle and spit it out. For females, a better result was to have it mixed in vermouth.

The state-doping machine was cranked up to the maximum when the Winter Olympics were staged at the Black Sea resort of Sochi in 2014.

To deceive dope testers, Rodchenkov described the role played by the feared FSB, the Russian secret service.

During the Games, an FSB agent, disguised as a plumber, used a "mouse hole" in the walls of the lab to switch drug-tainted samples for clean specimens.

The last episode which pushed Wada to triggering the ban which was affirmed on Thursday by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, dates back to 2018 when data from the Moscow laboratory for 2011-2015 that was submitted to investigators was manipulated.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE