Russia really didn't need a new deal. Still under threat of a four-year suspension from the Olympic movement, Russian sport is singled out for its doping practices in an incriminating book to be published at the end of the week in its English version.
The author is not unknown. Grigory Rodchenkov, the former head of the Moscow anti-doping laboratory, went down in history as a whistleblower. His revelations in 2015, delivered from the United States where he lives in exile, were at the origin of the Russian doping scandal at the Sochi Winter Games in 2014. They fueled the McLaren report.
Five years after his first bomb, Grigory Rodchenkov does it again. The Russian scientist signs an autobiography soaked in sulfur. Its title says it all: The Rodchenkov Affair – How I Brought Down Putin's Secret Doping Empire. In French, The Rodchenkov Affair – How I brought down Putin's secret doping empire.
The book will be released on Thursday July 30, but its good pages were published on Sunday July 26 by the British daily Mail on Sunday.
When it comes time to reveal his files, Grigory Rodchenkov gets off to a gentle start. He recounts his childhood in the Soviet Union, then his years of study in Moscow, where he was confronted for the first time, as an athlete, with the reality of doping.
Then the Russian picks up the pace. He evokes the year 1984 and the Los Angeles Olympic Games. And, surprise, reveals a never before suggested explanation for the boycott of the Soviet Union. “ The Soviets planned to hide a doping control laboratory aboard a ship in Los Angeles Harbor during the 1984 Olympics, after Manfred Donike (editor’s note: IOC anti-doping manager) and Don Catlin of the UCLA Olympic Analytical Laboratory had announced that they would be able to detect all the products – including stanozolol and testosterone, He says. Testing athletes before they left would not be enough – the Soviet sports czars had to have their own laboratory on site to ensure that no dirty Soviet athletes made it to the starting lines. When Los Angeles wouldn't allow our ship into port, that was the last straw. The Politburo pulled the plug and boycotted the Olympics entirely. »
According to Grigory Rodchenkov, the boycott of the Los Angeles Games in 1984 was therefore not political. It was dictated by the doping rules. The Russian specifies that the ship in question was indeed present in South Korea during the Seoul Games in 1988.
The other revelation concerns Ben Johnson. Grigory Rodchenkov claims that the Canadian sprinter had already fallen into the net of the fight against doping at the Goodwill Games organized by Ted Turner in Moscow in 1986. Two years before the Seoul Games and his resounding positive test for stanozolol, Ben Johnson had tested positive by the USSR. Grigory Rodchenkov recounts in his autobiography that he himself analyzed the samples taken after his victory in the 100m final, where he won in 9 seconds 95, ahead of the Nigerian Chidi Imoh and the American Carl Lewis.
« The analysis of doping control at the Goodwill Games turned out to be a formality, he writes. Our laboratory discovered 14 positive results, but Goskomsport apparatchiks (editor’s note: the Soviet Ministry of Sports) chose not to report them. Ben Johnson beat Carl Lewis, but later tested positive for stanozolol. I did his analysis. The result was never reported. »
Less unexpected but still eloquent, an episode from the Sochi 2014 Games. Grigory Rodchenkov explains that he missed the closing ceremony, because he was attending the same moment in the secrecy of an office at the “ last important session of exchanging urine bottles, to protect two Russian gold medalists. » One of them would be the bobsledder Alexander Zubkov, the standard bearer of the Russian delegation.
