How 'Icarus' Accidentally Exposed A Major 'Ocean's Eleven-Style' Doping Scheme
Bryan Fogel set out to make a film about taking performance-enhancing drugs. He stumbled upon a much bigger scandal of Russian state-sponsored doping — and won the Oscar for best documentary feature.
Nearly every sport has been hit with news of doping — of athletes using illegal performance-enhancing drugs. Perhaps the most famous example is cyclist Lance Armstrong, who denied doping allegations for years and then admitted using performance-enhancing drugs in 2013. That's where the documentary Icarus begins.
Director Bryan Fogel decided to explore the subject by taking his own regimen of performance-enhancing drugs to prepare for an amateur cycling race. He injected himself in the butt; he framed shots of blood running down his leg. It was, by his own admission, "almost an absurdist comedy."
"I mean, it was a little ludicrous," he says in an interview. "But for what I was
