dr. grigory rodchenkov. >> big boss vladimir putin saying we have to show the best result in sochi. >> two people connected with the russian doping program are already dead. >> there never was anti-doping in russia. ever. >> reporter: an explosive story now chronicled in the new netflix documentary "icarus." >> be very careful recording. >> would it be safe to say when you started this project you had no idea what you were getting into? >> 100%. no idea. >> the ability to go day after day -- >> reporter: filmmaker and amateur cyclist bryan fogle says he initially set out to understand how his hero, lance armstrong, had managed to get clean drug tests for years despite his doping. >> if lance had been able to do this and everybody else, forget about cycling. what did this mean for every sport on planet earth? >> going to do an injection. exciting. >> reporter: so fogh'll decided to make himself the guinea pig. he'd take p.e.d.s and see if he too could pass the drug test. filming every step along the way. >> i was very interested to see if it was still possible to evade detection. for help w

dr. grigory rodchenkov. at the time, he ran russia's anti-doping lab.. >> it's worse than we thought. >> reporter: at what point did you know that your story's way bigger. >> putin appears on state television, and not only does he deny everything. he says that there was no state-sponsored doping in russia. and about 12 hours after that statement, gregory is on call to me, and he has two kgb agents living in his home protecting him, and he tells me that they're going to kill him. >> reporter: fogel says he immediately bought him a flight out of moscow to the u.s. he said he brought something with him, a hard drive filled with documents, detailing russia's doping program. >> i realize that not only am i sitting on a nuclear bomb of information that changes all of sport history, he had come preparing to blow the lid off of this. >> reporter: according to rochenkov, people posing as workers swapped out dirty urine of russian athletes for clean samples. once safely in the u.s., he decided to go public and fogel was deeply intertwined. international outrage e