Russian Olympic athletes reportedly mix their steroids with alcohol

Turns out for at least 15 of Russia's medal-winners in the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, their successes might have had more to do with chemistry than exceptional athleticism. The former director of Russia's anti-doping laboratory, Grigory Rodchenkov, tells The New York Times that at the request of the Russian government, athletes boosted their performances by ingesting a cocktail made by mixing three anabolic steroids — metenolone, trenbolone, and oxandrolone — and then dissolving them in alcohol to "speed up absorption... and shorten the detection window." Men were served Chivas whiskey, while women got Martini vermouth.

In what The New York Times calls "one of the most elaborate — and successful — doping ploys in sports," Russia's anti-doping experts and intelligence services members reportedly managed to elude drug testing by swapping out contaminated urine samples with clean samples in the still of the night. Bottles that were supposedly "tamper-proof" were broken into undetected, and bottles of urine were surreptitiously removed from the testing laboratory through a "hand-size hole" in the wall that was hidden by a cabinet during the day.

All in all, Rodchenkov says, nearly 100 dirty urine samples were exchanged — and no athletes were caught doping. Russia won 33 medals in Sochi, the highest count of the 2014 Games.

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Read the full story on how Russia pulled off its doping ploy over at The New York Times.