The mouse hole and the ‘magicians’: how Russia doped at the Sochi Olympics
A discreet “mouse hole” through a wall, surreptitiously tampered samples using table salt and night-time visits by Russian secret service agents dubbed “the magicians”.
The revelations detailed in a damning 100-page report released on Monday, alleging Russian state-run doping at the 2014 Sochi Winter Games and other major sports events, read like a Cold War thriller.
The probe by Canadian law professor Richard McLaren for the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) found that the FSB – the successor to the notorious KGB – helped “the state-dictated failsafe system” carried out under the Moscow sports ministry and covering 30 sports.
Homing in on the Sochi Games – President Vladimir Putin’s chance to show the world that Russia was a sporting great just like old Soviet times – McLaren’s report states: “The FSB was intricately entwined in the scheme to allow Russian athletes to compete while dirty.”
