Olympic Doping Diaries: Chemist's Notes Bolster Case Against Russia
Source: New York Times
The International Olympic Committee’s decision next week on how to punish Russia will be informed
by diaries seen exclusively by The New York Times.
By REBECCA R. RUIZNOV. 28, 2017
The chemist has kept a diary most of his life. His daily habit is to record where he went, whom he talked to and what he ate. At the top of each entry, he scrawls his blood pressure.
Two of his hardback journals, each embossed with the calendar year and filled with handwritten notes from a Waterman pen, are now among the critical pieces of evidence that could result in Russia being absent from the next Olympic Games.
The chemist is Grigory Rodchenkov, who spent years helping Russia’s athletes gain an edge by using banned substances. His diaries cataloging 2014 and 2015 — his final years as Russia’s antidoping lab chief before he fled to the United States — provide a new level of detail about Russia’s elaborate cheating at the last Winter Games and the extent to which, he says, the nation’s government and Olympic officials were involved.
His contemporaneous notes, seen exclusively by The New York Times, speak to a key issue for Olympic officials: the state’s involvement in the massive sports fraud. In recent days, it has become clear that the notes bolster Rodchenkov’s credibility in the eyes of the International Olympic Committee and are likely to compel the group to issue severe penalties.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/28/sports/olympics/russia-doping.html
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