The Kings of Doping: Russia

The last years, Russia has been appeared as the country with the largest number of doped athletes: more than 1,000 athletes and 29 olympic medallists have been accused. ‘An unprecedented fraud’ according to the WADA.

Grigori Rodchenov, who had been worked for the RUSADA (Russian Antidoping Agency) between 2006 and 2011, used anabolic agents. He has the aim to get many medals in the Olympic Winter Games of Sochi 2014, because 4 years before Russia only was the 6th country in the medals classification.

Rodchenov decided to tell the truth to the WADA some years later and uncover this story. It was a systematic plan of many years, when, for example, two female urine were discovered as male urine.

The plan had two phases. The first one was to avoid the doping control: all the athletes knew how to avoid them and what they had to do. The second one was to avoid this controls during the competition, but it was more difficult because of the WADA, but the RUSADA constructed a building near the sport facilities where they can avoid this controls. There, they had two bottles: one where they should urine and other where there were the false urine.

Nevertheless, there was a problem. One of the Russian athletes, Yuliya Stepanova, and his boyfriend, Vitaly Stepanov, picked up some tests about the plan. They sent to the AMA 200 mails that included all that Rodchenkov was doing. In 2014, all the world discovered the truth with a documentary film in the German television about the Russian doping, where Stepanova and another athlete, Liliya Shobukhova, confirmed the suspicion. They related that they had to pay 450.000 € to convert a positive test doping to negative. In 2015, Rodchenkov ran away to United States of America.

In the Olympic Games of 2016, 111 athletes were removed because of previous doping by the COI, and in 2017, they removed all the athletes for the Olympic Winter Games of 2018. Then, in 2018, before the Olympic Games, the penalty was changed and the Russian athletes could participated in this competition.

Here you can see a video that resume the Russian doping plan.

Thanks for coming,

Sergio Torreblanca.

Bibliography:

http://www.superdeporte.es/olimpiadas/2016/07/21/cronologia-escandalo-dopaje-deporte-rusia/304380.html

http://www.xlsemanal.com/conocer/20170124/dopaje-rusia-deportes-doping.html

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopaje_en_Rusia

http://www.bbc.com/sport/winter-sports/42674331

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/02/icarus-documentary-nominee-doping