Icarus

   Icarus poster picture

      This week I had to watch a documentary for my English class. We were able to choose from a number of different ones, but the one I was most interested is one called Icarus, as it was highly recommended by my boss. I really enjoy documentaries, so I am happy to report this one did not disappoint and I would highly recommend watching this one to anyone. It starts out with a man named Bryan Fogel interested in seeing how much doping would help him in cycling. He starts searching through a number of doctors until he comes across one that works for the anti-doping agency in Russia named Grigory Rodchenkov. Very quickly we learn that Russia is not playing by the book and many people start coming forward claiming they have a systematic doping system in place for every major sporting event, especially the Olympics, fully equipped by the government, with Rodchenkov being the key piece in all of it. Fogel helps his new-found friend escape Russia to testify against what they have been doing for all of those years. 

Grigory Rodchenkov (left) and Bryan Fogel (right) working together

     The part that ended up really shocking me was to what extent Russia had been doing to cheat the competition. Typically when doping, the Russians would cut off the performance enhancers weeks or months to make sure they would not get caught when random testing occurred. During the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia, they wanted to make sure they completely obliterated the competition, which included keeping the athletes on their doping plans throughout the competition. But how would they avoid getting caught? They specifically designed the building that housed the urine samples of the athletes in a specific way so that they would be able to come in and switch out the samples whenever they wanted without being caught by the people hired by the Olympic committee to protect them.

    This whole story but especially this part that showed the lengths Russia was willing to go to cheat was very infuriating for me. Part of this is the fact that I have been an athlete for my entire life. I could never imagine a point where sports would become that important that an entire government would step in to fix events. This takes everything people know and love about sports out of the equation! Sports are meant to showcase talents and show the competitive drive that everyone has in them. I would feel absolutely heartbroken if I was someone that lost to one of these cheaters! 

    The second thing that makes me upset is looking at this perspective from a fan. I watched these Olympics and the ones before it that the Russians were cheating. I even have specific memories of those games including watching the snowboarding and some of the Russian hockey games, despite them losing to the US. Looking forward at any kind of competition it can be kind of hard to trust the sport because the sanctity of them has been broken by scandals like these.

    Overall, I must again repeat how good this documentary was. It often seems to me like the best documentaries are on subjects that seem just too crazy to actually be true and this one certainly is one of those. How it started with one cyclist interested in seeing if doping actually works to where it ends up with a scandal that leads all the way up to Vladimir Putin.

Russian Olympic Team entering the 2014 Olympics