Who knew that the hero of the Rio Games would be a gray-haired, mustachioed Russian in his late 50s, who used his scientific brilliance not to search for a disease’s cure, but to help Russians win Olympic medals by dissolving banned performance-enhancing drugs into Chivas and vermouth?
A hero who, under the cloak of night, switched athletes’ drug-tainted urine for clean urine, so that doped athletes wouldn’t test positive.
If that doesn’t sound like a character you could cheer for, well, then, you’re missing the big picture in this chapter of the long-running story of doping in sports. Because if there’s ever going be a semblance of a happy ending to this saga, there needs to be more heroes like this one. Flawed heroes, yes, but ones whose eventual contribution to clean sport is immeasurable.
This Rio hero is Grigory Rodchenkov, the former director of Russia’s anti-doping lab, who helped dope athletes and cover up their drug use because his government asked him to. What makes him a hero in today’s Olympic movement — one of the current heroes, I should say — is that he was brave enough to blow the whistle on Russia’s state-sponsored doping program. He spilled the details to The New York Times in May, prompting the World Anti-Doping Agency to investigate his claims and, two months later, to validate his claims in a report made public Monday.
Because Rodchenkov told his story, there just might be fewer dopers competing in the Rio Games next month. His efforts could also embolden other whistle-blowers to come forward and expose cheating in sports. This could be a watershed moment for Olympic sport in its long-standing battle with dopers.
But that will happen only if the International Olympic Committee backs up the efforts of these whistle-blowers and punishes Russia appropriately, now that the world knows the Russian government was in on the whole doping program. Even top Russian government officials were involved in their scheme to dominate Olympic sports, with the deputy minister for sport personally deciding which failed doping tests to cover up.
Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee, and the IOC’s executive board met Tuesday to begin discussing Russia’s fate, announcing afterward that the committee was considering its legal options for discipline and had established a five-person disciplinary commission to assess the facts of the case.
But here was the gist of the meeting: After more reams of dark details of Russian state-sponsored doping were revealed in Monday’s 97-page WADA report, should any Russians compete in Rio? Bach and the IOC will decide.
Bach talked tough before the meeting.
“The findings of the report show a shocking and unprecedented attack on the integrity of sport and on the Olympic Games,” Bach said in a statement Monday. “Therefore, the IOC will not hesitate to take the toughest sanctions available against any individual or organization implicated.”
The Russian track and field federation was previously barred from the games in the wake of revelations of state-sponsored doping of its competitors, which were made public in a WADA report in November, the first of two WADA reports about widespread cheating in Russia.
The basis of that investigation? Information from whistle-blowers.
The heroes in that case were Vitaly Stepanov, who used to work at the Russian anti-doping agency, and his wife, Yuliya Stepanova, a runner who had doped under the Russian system. They secretly recorded Russian coaches and athletes talking about their doping, then they gave the information and told their stories to ARD, a German broadcaster that aired a blockbuster documentary on Russian doping in 2014.
With their young son, the Stepanovs fled Russia and are now living in the United States, fearing for their lives, with good reason. In doing the right thing by exposing Russia’s doping program, they took on a country where winning at all costs was the mantra. Rodchenkov took the same risks for speaking out against Russia’s doping machine.
Knowing all that, the IOC should slap Russia with a swift and stinging ban, but it takes guts to do so. (On Tuesday, the IOC said it was weighing the possibility of a total ban against letting individual athletes compete.) It takes someone who will champion these whistle-blowers, so the efforts of those who spoke out mean something. So more athletes feel comfortable coming forward to talk about the underbelly of sports.
The anti-doping agencies of at least 10 nations, including the United States, Germany and Canada, have asked for the IOC to bar the entire Russian delegation from Rio. Some clean athletes have voiced their opinions, too.
Bach and the IOC could kick out the Russian delegation. That would be the simplest way to make a point. Or they could do what the IOC does best, and that’s let international sports federations do the dirty work. The federations could be charged with picking through the mass of Russian cheaters to choose clean athletes, case by case, to compete in Rio. With more than 25 federations, that process could drag on forever.
Whatever Bach does, he at least should acknowledge the value of the whistle-blowers in all of this mess, and thank them for their work. Without them, doped Russian athletes would very likely have won medals in Rio — perhaps only to have those medals snatched back years later, when the drug testers finally caught up with them.
It would be a nice touch, too, if Bach acknowledged the yawning holes in the anti-doping system, gaps that allowed the Russians to be so bold in their cheating, and pushed forward with a plan for a truly independent anti-doping organization that would do all the testing and the follow-up. We know now that individual nations involved in the testing of their own athletes are so easily corrupted.
Rodchenkov’s late-night switching of urine samples at the 2014 Sochi Games was just a snapshot of Russia’s duplicity. The whole well-organized scheme makes Lance Armstrong’s doping, once labeled by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency as “the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen,” look as if it were run by teenagers in a high school chemistry class.
The IOC is facing perhaps the biggest doping scandal in sports history. The whistle-blowers are holding their breath. The Russians and clean athletes are, too.
All while Bach is sitting at his laptop, crafting the ending to this hero’s play.
The Rio Games are less than three weeks away. He’d better type fast.