Summary of Grigory Rodchenkov's The Rodchenkov Affair

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 In 1981, I was 22 years old, and lying on a sofa in my family’s Moscow apartment. My mother, an attractive 54-year-old woman who had graduated from the First Moscow State Medical University, had drawn the contents of a 50mg ampoule of the Hungarian steroid Retabolil into a disposable syringe and injected it into my right buttock.

#2 I had asthma as a child. My parents personified the intellectual schizophrenia necessary for survival in communist Russia. My mother had lost her own father to one of Stalin’s purges, but she and my father never joined the Communist Party.

#3 I had discovered that I loved competing, and in my worst moments since then, I have drawn from my experience in competitive running. I had never grown up, and I still turned on the television and watched track and field events with the same sense of admiration as when I was a teenager.

#4 I was admitted to the chemistry department at Moscow State University in 1977. The university had the toughest curriculum in the country, and laboratory sessions dragged on into the night because we had to clean our labware before we were allowed to go home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822514386

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Insights on Grigory Rodchenkov's The Rodchenkov Affair

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

In 1981, I was 22 years old, and lying on a sofa in my family’s Moscow apartment. My mother, an attractive 54-year-old woman who had graduated from the First Moscow State Medical University, had drawn the contents of a 50mg ampoule of the Hungarian steroid Retabolil into a disposable syringe and injected it into my right buttock.

#2

I had asthma as a child. My parents personified the intellectual schizophrenia necessary for survival in communist Russia. My mother had lost her own father to one of Stalin’s purges, but she and my father never joined the Communist Party.

#3

I had discovered that I loved competing, and in my worst moments since then, I have drawn from my experience in competitive running. I had never grown up, and I still turned on the television and watched track and field events with the same sense of admiration as when I was a teenager.

#4

I was admitted to the chemistry department at Moscow State University in 1977. The university had the toughest curriculum in the country, and laboratory sessions dragged on into the night because we had to clean our labware before we were allowed to go home.

#5

I learned about a doping scandal in 1978, when five discus throwers, shot-putters and a pentathlete from the Eastern Bloc were stripped of their medals after testing positive for nandrolone. This news was never announced in Russia, Bulgaria or anywhere else behind the so-called Iron Curtain.

#6

The 1980 Moscow Olympics were a glorious chapter in Soviet history. However, as an athlete and budding chemist, I began to see a dark side to the Soviet sports machine. I learned about the sophistication of sport doping regimens.

#7

I was overtraining, and my coach told