SOCHI, Russia — The bartender at the restaurant here flipped a liquor bottle stylishly around his back and laid out the ingredients for a cerulean, absinthe-based cocktail that he garnished with a golden berry.
It was not so long ago that far different, far less palatable, concoctions — urine, coffee grounds, table salt, to name a few choice ingredients — were mixed inside this same building, mere steps from where he stood.
The restaurant, La Punto, is a Sochi gastro pub recommended to fans on the World Cup website that just so happens to be in the same building that housed the notorious antidoping laboratory at the center of one of the most elaborate cheating schemes in sports history.