in sporting history began to unravel later in twenty fourteen husband and wife whistleblowers vitale stepanov and yulia stepan over helped to lift the lid on a widespread drugs cover up in russian athletics russia's testing laboratory was suspended by water the world anti-doping agency and all russian track and field athletes were banned from international competition but the scandal was to get far bigger thanks to testimony from the former head of the russian the poetry gregory rich inc of. just before the twenty sixteen rio olympics was the investigator richard mclaren revealed russia had adopted a state sponsored doping program in the lead up to the sochi games he concluded more than one thousand russian athletes across thirty sports benefited from the program very quickly we learned that there was a lot more going on than just what without it socially and once we learned that and it was early days in the investigation yes we were more than surprised to restore. the potential scope of what was going on at this year's winter olympics in south korea russian athletes were only allowed to comp