‘The Kremlin wants me dead’: Russia's sports doping whistleblower speaks out
The man in front of me is wearing a disguise. We are talking on Skype. I’m at my home near London and Dr Grigory Rodchenkov is at an undisclosed location somewhere in America, guarded 24/7 by armed FBI agents. How is he? “My life is good. My mood is very good,” he says. He’s grinning, I think. Since he’s wearing a black scarf over his face and dark glasses, it’s hard to tell.
The cloak-and-dagger atmospherics surrounding our interview might seem a little overblown. Until, that is, you remember, Vladimir Putin’s roving assassins are trying to establish Rodchenkov’s secret location so they can snuff him out, a traitor to the state. Russia’s president has a long list of enemies. But Rodchenkov – the most significant sports whistleblower of the 21st century – is probably at the top.
Rodchenkov was director of Moscow’s anti-doping centre. The super-lab’s name is a misnomer. As Rodchenkov recounts in a gripping memoir, , he ran Russia’s doping programme. He developed a novel drugs cocktail to help his country win. It featured three nearly undetectable anabolic steroids. Athletes
