Russian Olympic athletes reportedly mix their steroids with alcohol

Russian athletes reportedly take steroids with alcohol.

(Image credit: Harry Engels/Getty Images)

published 12 May 2016

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.