Steroid Scandal Made for Hollywood

From it seemingly complete takeover of the cyclist world to its crushing of some of baseballs biggest names, steroids have been a catalyst for countless sport scandals that have shocked the world. However, few of these headlines could compete with the storyline associated with Russia’s government sponsored doping scandal.

Following the 2014 Sochi Winter Games it was discovered that Russia had gone to extreme measures to infiltrate the games with an army of steroid users. Perhaps most shocking was the amount of people and organizations that were involved in this process. Russias own Ministry of Sport was responsible for directing this processes and oversaw the manipulation of athlete’s analytical results or sample swapping. Participation and assistance also included Russian security service, FSB, the Centre of Sports Preparation, and both Moscow and Sochi Laboratories. While it is still denied to this day, it is believed that this state sponsored doping was endorsed by Putin himself.

It would eventually be discovered that the nation wide doping went back to 2011 and between that time and 2015 there were more than a thousand Russian athletes benefited from the use of steroids. Extreme measures were taken to secretly swap testing sample at olympic competitions which involved processes as crazy as creating secret holes in laboratory walls where samples could be snuck in the middle of the night.

To make the storyline of the Russian doping scandal even more compelling, there have been multiple suspicious deaths related to these events that occurred soon after this information was discovered. Included in this was the executive director of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA), Nikita Kamaev, and the chairman of the RUSADA, Vyacheslav Sinev.

Whether or not details of this scandal have been used to create conspiracy theories, the situation itself has not been any less shocking to the sport world. Russia has been accused of single handedly attacking the integrity of sport. All in all Russia got off relatively easy with a ban of 47 athletes and coaches from the 2018 winter olympics with 169 Russian athletes still competing as independents.

• Jacob Groat