Former anti-doping head elaborates on Russia's doping exercise

Grigory Rodchenkov, the director of Russia’s anti-doping laboratory during the Winter Olympics at Sochi, has elaborated on the way urine samples were substituted to ensure athletes never got caught: by finding a way to open sealed samples.

A general view shows a building of the federal state budgetary institution "Federal scientific centre of physical culture and sports", which houses a laboratory led by Grigory Rodchenkov and accredited by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), in Moscow, Russia.

At a time when Russia’s sporting integrity is in question, light has been thrown on a clinically supervised doping program ahead of the Winter Olympics at Sochi, carried out by anti-doping officials in collusion with athletes. Grigory Rodchenkov, the director of Russia’s anti-doping laboratory at the time, has elaborated on the way urine samples were substituted to ensure athletes never got caught: by finding a way to open sealed samples.

In an investigative report carried by the New York Times , Rodchenkov has admitted that as many as 100 urine samples, liable to be ‘dirty’, were annihilated.

Russia, the country that hosted the Winter Olympics in 2014, received the most number of medals, 33, outperforming its rival, the US, which managed 28 medals. Russia also possessed the most number of gold medals in the event, 13.

The doping program, Rodchenkov claimed, had worked like ‘a Swiss watch’. He had developed a three-drug cocktail to be administered to athletes.

Rodchenkov is now in the US after having been removed from Russia’s anti-doping laboratory, following a damning report by World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).