SOCHI, RUSSIA – FEBRUARY 21: Franziska Hildebrand of Germany leaves the Doping Control station after the Women’s 4 x 6 km Relay during day 14 of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics at Laura Cross-country Ski & Biathlon Center on February 21, 2014 in Sochi, Russia. (Photo by Adam Pretty/Getty Images)

The McLaren Report on Doping

By David Wallechinsky

On 9 December 2016, Richard H. McLaren released the second and final report of his investigation into allegations of widespread government-sponsored doping in Russia. The report makes it clear that, from the highest levels, the Russian government conspired to make a mockery of the Olympic Movement and the ideals of Olympism by systematically manipulating and covering up positive doping tests at the London 2012 Summer Games, the Universiade Games 2013, the Moscow IAAF World Championships 2013, and the Winter Games in Sochi in 2014. This cheating continued after the Sochi Olympics.

In the words of the McLaren Report, “The Russian Olympic team corrupted the London Games 2012 on an unprecedented scale, the extent of which will probably never be fully established…. The desire to win medals superseded their collective moral and ethical compass and Olympic values of fair play.”

More than 1,000 Russian athletes in 30 sports benefited from the concealment of positive doping tests. Although the names of most of the athletes were redacted from the public report, investigators forwarded the details of 695 of these Russian cases (and those of 19 foreign athletes) to International Federations.

The Russian Ministry of Sport directed the swapping of samples and the falsifying of doping test results with the active participation of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) (the successor to the KGB), the Center of Sports Preparation of National Teams of Russia (CSP), the Russian Anti-Doping Agency and the Moscow and Sochi doping laboratories.

It was Russian President Vladimir Putin who personally appointed Yuri Nagornykh, a member of the Russian Olympic Committee, to be deputy minister of sport. Nagornykh was put in charge of the implementation of the doping program and was informed of every positive doping test at the Moscow Laboratory from 2011 onwards.

Thirty-seven Russian athletes who were considered to be possible Sochi medal winners were asked to supply up to four or five clean urine samples each. Irina Rodionova, deputy director of the CSP, was in charge of receiving these samples. The “protected” athletes were then put on a regime known as the “Duchess Cocktail,” a mixture of three steroids—trenbolone, methenolone (Primobolan) and oxandrolone (Anavar)—which had been developed by Grigory Rodchenkov, director of the Moscow Anti-Doping Center from 2005 and an FSB agent since 2007. These athletes were authorized to continue taking the Duchess Cocktail during the Sochi Games.

Prior to the Sochi Olympics, the FSB transferred the clean samples to large freezer units inside a secret FSB command center adjacent to the Sochi laboratory. Whenever a doped athlete was tested, he or she would take a photo of their Doping Control Form and then transmit the photo to Rodionova. FSB agent Yevgeny Blokhin, who was credentialed as a “maintenance engineer” for the Bilfinger Company, would go to the command center and defrost the clean samples of the Russian athletes who had been tested. Rodchenkov’s second in command at the Sochi laboratory, Yuri Chizhov, would adjust the specific gravity of the samples to reflect the values of the original dirty sample indicated on the appropriate Doping Control Form.

Late at night, after all non-Russian personnel had left the Sochi laboratory, Moscow laboratory employee Evgeny Kudryavtsev would pass the dirty samples through a hole in the wall to the FSB Command Center, where Rodchenkov, Chizhov and Blokhin would swap the dirty samples for clean ones and pass these back through the hole in the wall to Kudryavtsev.

McLaren and his associates sought, but were unable to obtain, the Moscow laboratory server or its computer records. Samples in the laboratory’s storage area were sealed off by the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation.

Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Mutko did not cooperate with the investigation. He is currently chairman of the 2018 FIFA World Cup organizing committee.

The good news is that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is taking aggressive action to retest doping samples from the most recent Olympic Games, including all Russian samples from 2008, 2010, 2012 and 2014. As of March 5, 2017, the IOC had already sanctioned 18 Russian athletes from Beijing 2008 and 20 from London 2012. Athletes who might consider cheating now know that their samples will be preserved for at least ten years to take advantage of improved testing methods.