With Russia standing accused of meddling in American politics and in Syria and Ukraine, new revelations about Russian doping in sports might seem anti-climactic. Yet the mountain of new evidence laid out by Richard McLaren, the Canadian lawyer appointed by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to investigate Russia’s doping program, is astounding.
The case against Russia has been building over several years, with a striking turn last spring when the former head of the Russian antidoping laboratory, Grigory Rodchenkov, described to The Times how he participated in a huge, state-supported operation at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics to swap out tainted urine samples from Russian athletes.