Sport for scandal

The new Netflix documentary, Icarus, starts with inspirational shots of Lance Armstrong and Marion Jones taking to the podium at the Tour de France and the Olympics, respectively, their multiple medal hauls a shining beacon to athleticism and the triumph of the human spirit.
 
Cut to news reports, press conferences and the final, teary-eyed acceptance of doping. Both Armstrong and Jones were stripped of their awards, but a larger question came to hang over the sporting establishment: How had the athletes managed to clear the multiple rounds of drug testing, which are an essential feature of international sporting events?
 
Bryan Fogel, the director of Icarus and an amateur cyclist himself, started this project with the aim of finding the answer to that question. His audacious plan: To improve his performance on the insanely arduous Mavic Haute Route by doping while simultaneously not getting caught, and thus bringing to light the hollowness of the international drug-testing system.
 
As Fogel starts making inquiries, he is directed to Grigory Rodchenkov, director of the Moscow anti-doping lab, the institution responsible for ensuring that Russian athletes meet all requirements of drug testing. Over surreal Skype conversations, Fogel learns that Rodchenkov is willing to prepare a plan for him to ace the Mavic Haute without arousing suspicion.
 
It is hard to say if Fogel got lucky, because he never really improved his performance in spite of ingesting a cocktail of myriad drugs, including testosterone and performance enhancers. But he did stumble upon journalistic gold as his association with Rodchenkov coincided with a series of events that unravelled the systematic gaming of the international drug-testing program supervised by the Russian state.
 
In December 2014, German broadcaster ARD first reported on suspicions that Russian athletes across a range of sports had benefited from a state-sanctioned doping program. The report forced the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada), the regulatory body for all testing, to institute an internal enquiry. A year later, the inquiry submitted its report, corroborating allegations made by ARD.
 
With the scandal acquiring international dimensions, Rodchenkov feared for his life and requested Fogel to help him seek asylum in the US. The documentary captures the tense moments as Rodchenkov boards his flight, unsure when he might be intercepted by Russian agents for trying to flee the country. Once he reaches the US, he learns that two other people associated with the program died mysterious deaths.
 
Based on Rodchenkov’s testimony, which included a huge cache of documents and emails from top officials in the Russian administration, Wada commissioned another inquiry under the stewardship of sports lawyer Richard McLaren. The investigation was expressly mandated to probe how Russia manipulated the drug testing program at the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014.
 
The findings were incriminatory. McLaren’s report, which was released in July 2016, concluded that the Russian ministry of sports had colluded with the FSB (the successor of the Soviet spy arm KGB) to run a highly efficient operation to beat the drug testing system. They used what is known as a “disappearing positive test methodology” in which “dirty” urine samples were removed from the testing site. Icarus is most effective at bringing out the mindboggling breadth of the operation, involving the collection and freezing of “clean” urine samples of hundreds of Russian athletes over several years.
 
Chastised by the findings, Wada recommended that the entire Russian contingent be banned from participating at the 2016 Rio Olympics. The International Olympic Association refused to play ball, declaring that every athlete would be judged individually. Consequently, 270 athletes were cleared for competition, while 167 were removed because of doping.
 
The explosive subject of Icarus leaves little scope for critique. Yet, Fogel’s treatment of Rodchenkov as a hero rankles. The Moscow lab director is presented as a champion of truth — quoting liberally from George Orwell’s 1984, he is keen to showcase himself as a lone man fighting mighty forces. Little mention is made of his own involvement in the doping program that some analysts say goes back many decades.
 
Even so, it is hard to quibble with narrative loopholes, given the magnitude of what the film captures. What is most damning about the episode is the whimsicality of how punishment is meted out in today’s Russia. The sports minister, Vitaly Mutko, escaped unharmed due to his closeness to President Vladimir Putin. Not just that, when defending the doping program became untenable, he was promoted to deputy prime minister by Putin.
 
Amends are finally being made, though. Last week, Dmitry Shylakhtin, the head of Russia’s athletics body, apologised to the global athletics federation for his country’s role in doping. “I would like to apologise to all athletes who have had gold and silver medals snatched from them at competitions. I can assure you that our new team will fight doping and what happened will never happen again,” Shylakhtin said.
 
Be that as it may, one cannot escape the feeling that the Russians were forced to back down in this particular case due to the severity of the international spotlight. What other skeletons snooze undisturbed in that administration’s closet, waiting for a whistleblower and a sympathetic director to bring them to life?

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