Gifts for the Host

On May 12, The New York Times published a sensational interview with the former head of the Anti-Doping Center, Grigory Rodchenkov, who claims that a system of falsifying steroid tests was in place at the Sochi Olympics.

Rodchenkov said that: (1) he himself prepared a cocktail of several steroids that was taken by Russian athletes, including those who won gold medals; (2) as a cover operation, a system was developed to replace the urine tests mandatory for athletes after the competition: all this took place in an anti-doping laboratory located directly in the Olympic village; (3) this operation was prepared long before the start of the Sochi Games, and FSB officers took part in it, who, in particular, figured out how to open test containers without breaking the corresponding seals with codes, and during the Games they worked under cover of laboratory employees; (4) not only the athletes themselves, but also high-level sports officials were aware of the system of fraud created in Sochi, thanks to which Russia scored the largest number of gold medals at the 2014 Winter Olympics.

This is not even a competition between chemical and pharmaceutical brains - these are the actions of banal crooks, tweakers, acting under cover and, possibly, with the blessing of the state

The Kremlin and sports chiefs exhaled for days, then declared that they had been slandered. Some sports online publications immediately hinted that Rodchenkov, to put it mildly, was inadequate: “He broke all his brains into pieces,” a text on one of the sites appeared under this heading: “he (Rodchenkov) was saved from prison by schizotypal disorder and a failed suicide.” Well, of course, a psycho - what a healthy person will go against the FSB - the logic is well known since the days of the fight against dissidents in the USSR: will normal people protest? And in general, “he lives in Miami,” explained the frankness of the chemist, the gold medalist of the Sochi Olympics, named by Rodchenkov among those 15 who received the steroid cocktail he developed: for 1 milligram of the steroid, 1 milliliter of Chivas whiskey for men and Martini for women. What a gourmet, however… But the gourmet is no longer ours — an enemy, a “defector,” Rodchenkov was denounced by presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov, using terminology from the Cold War era to characterize him.

Someone will say: professional sports today more often than not are a struggle between chemists and pharmacists, in which athletes act as guinea pigs. Perhaps so, although, judging by the activity of the world anti-doping agency, the movement for clean sports - including those cleared of doping - is becoming the new global fashion. However, if the candidate of chemical sciences, who for 9 years headed the federal state (sic!) Unitary enterprise in Moscow to combat doping in sports, does not lie (or even half lies) and bottles with the urine of athletes were really replaced in Sochi, then this is already a shame indescribable: this is not even a competition between chemical and pharmaceutical brains - these are the actions of banal crooks, tweakers acting undercover and, possibly, with the blessing of the state. Frankly speaking, it doesn’t matter whether Putin authorized steroid cocktails in order for the Sochi Olympics to demonstrate the triumph of the Russian model of the world, or whether it was a gift to him from his servants – it is obvious that the level of degradation of Russian power has reached the limit when, for the sake of the highest praise is already allowed and everyone presents their gifts based on the resource that they have: someone - the head of an opposition politician, and someone - a golden medal rain: in Sochi, Russian athletes won 11 more gold medals than in four years before that in Vancouver.