Widespread cheating by Russian athletes has been uncovered. One of the key figures was Russian Dr. Rodchenkov who had breakthrough work on the detection of peptides and long-term metabolites of prohibited substances.
In the jargon of espionage, Dr. Rodchenkov was a double agent. While operating at the forefront of doping detection, he was secretly developing a cocktail of drugs with a very short detection window.
The doping was referred to as “Duchess.”
This was in connection with the mouse hole breach in the testing facility. In the dead of night, Russian officials exchanged the tainted urine from their athletes who had been doping with clean samples by passing them through a “mouse hole” drilled into the wall of the anti-doping lab.
The bottles were supposed to be tamper-proof. The Russian agents were able to open the tamper-proof bottles and replace the contents without detection. Upon closer inspection, investigators were able to identify bottles that were tampered with by identifying scratches on the inside of the bottle caps.
695 Russian athletes can be identified as benefiting from the manipulation to conceal potential positive doping controls. They have not yet been identified.
The reports reveals that the Russian Ministry of Sport manipulated the doping control process of the 2014 Sochi Games; the 2013 IAAF World Championships in Moscow; the 2013 World University Games in Kazan; and, put measures in place to circumvent anti-doping processes before the 2012 London Games.
Sources:
- Report Shows Vast Reach of Russian Doping: 1,000 Athletes, 30 Sports by Rebecca Ruiz in the New York Times
- McLaren Report II on Russian Doping
- McLaren Report I on Russina Doping
- Russia Used ‘Mouse Hole’ To Swap Urine Samples Of Olympic Athletes by Greg Myre
