Russian Insider Says State-Run Doping Fueled Olympic Gold

[fmk_RoI]

This is getting a bit Man in the High Castle here with alternative histories but what if the reason the Russians boycotted the LA84 Games wasn't a tit-for-tat counter-strike for the West's Moscow boycott and was actually driven by doping? This is what Grigory Rodchenkov is claiming in a new kiss-and-tell book, modestly titled The Rodchenkov Affair: How I Brought Down Russia's Secret Doping Empire.

In an explosive new book which is published on Thursday, Moscow lab boss turned whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov claims the Soviet Union boycotted the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles because they had such a big drugs problem that they feared being caught.

That is counter to the previously given narrative that they pulled out of the Games in retaliation at the USA’s decision to skip the 1980 Olympics in Moscow - a protest at the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

In extracts published by Sportsmail on Sunday, Rodchenkov says: ‘The Soviets had been planning to hide a doping control laboratory on board a ship in the port of Los Angeles during the 1984 Olympic Games, after Manfred Donike (a senior IOC anti-doping official) and Don Catlin of UCLA’s Olympic Analytical Laboratory announced they would be able to detect all steroids - including stanozolol and testosterone.

‘When Los Angeles wouldn’t allow our ship to enter the harbour, that was the last straw. The Politburo pulled the plug and boycotted the Olympics entirely.’

Source.

On the one hand, this is exactly what we in the West, and especially those in the US, want to hear. Is it cynical to note that Rodchenkov is now living in the US, safeguarded by their Witness Protection Scheme? Is he just saying what his protectors want to hear? Is he maybe doing a Tyler Hamilton and repeating scuttlebutt as unchecked fact? Or could he actually be telling the truth and anti-doping really was the reason the Russians stayed at home in '84?

For the record, we should also recall that the US does not have clean hands when it comes to doping and LA84:

Nine positive drug tests at the 1984 Summer Olympics were allegedly covered up and documentation subsequently destroyed, it was revealed Monday.

Don Catlin, director of the UCLA facility that handled the Olympic drug testing, told The Times that a number of positive results were never reported and that he never knew why.

Catlin’s comments come on the heels of reports on BBC television and in the Times of London that questioned the handling of drug testing during the L.A. Games.

A BBC report talked of a break-in and shredded documents, as if the latest Olympic drug scandal had borrowed pages from the Watergate and Iran-Contra affairs.

 

[BullsFan22]

I am pretty sure Rodchenkov is dead. Everytime they show 'someone' with his name under the supposed figure of Rodchenkov, it's either a different looking person or he is face is completely covered.

Видели нового Родченкова? Замотался шарфом, натянул шляпу, надел темные очки (видно только нос)

Это вообще кто?

www.sports.ru

Why can't they show his face? And in one one of the photos, where he's without a mustache, he looks like Brian Cox, the Scottish actor.

The guy is going around and making things up as he goes. Now apparently he's saying that Evi Sachenbacher-Stehle, the former German cross country skier turned biathlete was used as a 'scapegoat' to cover up the doping in Sochi, to avert the attention.

It seems completely different things show up every time they decide to 'show' him. I don't thrust the American authorities one bit.

It took Edward Snowden a few months to figure out what is going behind the scenes, as a 28/29 year old NSA worker and he right away spoke out. It took this 'Rodchenkov' guy 30 years to speak out, and again, with his entire face covered. I don't believe it one bit.

This is a very impressive political tool that the US has been using for the past 5-6 years, in response to the Ukraine and Russia not playing ball with the US. If a country doesn't play ball with the US, they will get attacked, one way or another. This isn't the first time this has happened. I've seen this from the US government many times before.

 

[postmanhat]

The Russian Affair by David Walsh, is on offer today on Amazon kindle.

For approximately the next 9 hours

Not sure if it is UK only though?

Amazon.co.uk