Grigory Rodchenkov interview: Mastermind behind the Russian doping scandal, now in hiding, speaks from secret location in the US

“I am a little bit nervous - post-baby delivery stress,” says Grigory Rodchenkov and, while it is impossible to see, you can somehow still sense a smile beneath his disguise.

It had initially been requested that the interview would be conducted by audio but, midway through, Rodchenkov asks for the camera to come on - “may I see Jeremy?” - and there he is, the man described as “the mastermind” behind arguably the biggest scandal in sports history.

He is seated in front of a plain white blind and is wearing a chequered shirt, dark glasses and balaclava.

The interview has followed a series of strict security requests and he remains under protection somewhere so secret in the United States that the location is unknown even to his attorney, Jim Walden, who has said: “They are desperate to silence him.” ‘They’ are Russian authorities and the ‘baby’ to which Rodchenkov referred is actually a book.

The Rodchenkov Affair: How I Brought Down Putin’s Secret Doping Empire was published last month and details an utterly incredible life story that veers from describing how his mother injected steroids into his buttock when he was an emerging middle-distance runner in the Soviet Union to his rise from chemistry student to director of Moscow’s anti-doping centre.

Some of the episodes almost defy belief.

There was a suicide attempt in 2011 when he came under investigation by the Federal Drug Control Service of Russia - “I plunged a kitchen knife into my heart while lying in the bathtub” - but believes that his doping knowledge ultimately proved so invaluable that the inquiry were dropped.

There was the performance-enhancing cocktail that he developed, christened the ‘Duchess’, combining methenolone, trenbolone and oxandrolone - all dissolved in Chivas Regal whisky - to ensure that the most detectable steroids would not emerge.

And then came the infamous operation at the Sochi Olympics in 2014 when, Rodchenkov revealed, dirty samples of Russian athletes were fed through a covered mouse hole from Room 125 of the anti-doping laboratory to Room 124. Room 124 was out of sight of the cameras and a member of the Russia security service, posing as a plumber, says Rodchenkov would replace the samples with pre-prepared clean ones. The key to the whole operation - something Rodchenkov describes as a “genius” breakthrough akin to “splitting the atom” - was how they opened the tamper-proof bottles, which were secured by lock springs and metal rings with teeth, without any obvious sign of damage. The plan initially worked. Russia topped the medals table and a moment of vast national pride was secured. The section in Rodchenkov’s book which is dedicated to his description of that episode is entitled simply, Conjurer.

Vladimir Putin, the Russia president, subsequently described Rodchenkov with some rather different adjectives - “imbecile” and “jerk” - and allegations that the country’s doping programme was orchestrated by the Kremlin have been rejected as “slander”. Putin also denied instructing officials to deliver victory.

The McLaren investigation, which was commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency, described an “institutionalised doping conspiracy and cover-up” and said that more than 1,000 Russian Olympic and Paralympic athletes benefited from manipulations. It also reported that samples were swapped and tampered with and, in 12 medal-winning athletes, scratches and marks were found on the inside of the bottle caps.

Helped by the American filmmaker Bryan Fogel, Rodchenkov made the decision to flee in late 2015 when allegations and evidence about Russian doping reached a tipping point. “I realised that my head contained secrets of incredible calibre - a tsunami.” He says that he was told, “you know too much and are in huge, huge danger”. The sudden deaths in February 2016 of two former heads of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (Rusada), Vyacheslav Sinev and Nikita Kamaev, left him in no doubt that his urgent disappearance was the right move. “I trusted my heart,” he now says. “When my friends told me about threats to my life, it was not the words, it was the manner. It was extremely convincing. I did everything to escape and then I decided to tell the truth.”

Fogel and Rodchenkov’s film, Icarus, first aired his revelations in 2017 and would win the Oscar for best documentary.

So how now is day-to-day life now? “I am cooking food, I am writing on the computer - my life is different but in a good way,” he says. “When I was director [of the Moscow lab], it was unlimited days. I drove home in darkness at 11pm and woke at 6am to be at work at 7am again. It was absolutely hectic and nervous. In the US, I can sleep and organise the day myself. I am balanced - eating good, drinking well. No worries.”

He is clearly also monitoring developments closely. He says that Russia’s subsequent behaviour - Rusada was declared non-compliant by Wada for doctoring lab data handed over to the investigation - “shows the country learns absolutely nothing”. Russia is now suspended from major international competition and, while athletes who prove their innocence could compete under a neutral flag in next year’s Olympics, Rodchenkov advocates an “absolute blanket ban”. Russia disputes Wada’s verdict and what Rodchenkov calls a “never-ending war” will find its next battlefield at an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

But what of other countries? Great Britain, after all, rose from one Olympic gold in 1996 to 27 2016. That was eight more than Russia, a country of 144 million, whose doping problem has been so clearly exposed.

“I could congratulate UK for such huge progression - I try to believe it’s absolutely clean, transparent, no doubts, no rule violations but I’m always suspicious when people are receiving gold medals in such sports as athletics, cycling, rowing,” says Rodchenkov. “I have some suspicions about one UK athlete but... I don’t want to tell names because I am still under investigation by New York court.”

Rodchenkov then says that Russia is a “unique case which I don’t believe can be repeated” because “it came from the top, from very highly-educated experts, with no limits financially”. He believes that a sound guide as to likely problems is the global index of corruption and press freedom and repeatedly notes that Russia and Kenya, where there have been numerous anti-doping violations, rate lowly on both these scales. “It [doping] is only one symptom,” he says.

There is also no pretence that doping is new and, while his book touches upon the old Soviet Union era and makes separate new allegations about Ben Johnson and the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, there is more he intends to say. “It’s not my last book - I have a lot of details of Soviet times -  I remember, day by day, what happened from 1985,” he says.

“In that time, the beginning of the 1980s, we had everything... whatever we need. Americans started to use 10 times more than Soviets. There was no fear to get detected.” Doping control, he says, did improve after it was introduced in 1976 but the arrival of human growth hormone and EPO in the 1990s meant sport again faced years trying to catch up with undetectable substances. So what is the future for anti-doping? The Rodchenkov Act was unanimously passed in the US House of Representatives and proposes, 'appropriate criminal penalties and civil penalties for international doping fraud’. This would mean athletes could sue to recover damages from individuals who may have defrauded competitions. Sanctions could include fines of up to $1 million and 10-year jail terms.

The idea is opposed by Wada but Rodchenkov says that it is an “absolute must”. He also argues passionately for greater flexibility. “If you have a positive in archery, it is an accidental case,” he says. “It is negligence and you cannot treat such violations in the same way as marathon running. It’s stupid. Wada wants to treat every sport, every country, the same way but they are different - you will be very much surprised how much they differ. And the governance of sports should not be sheikhs or lords - it should be as close to athletes as possible. Athletes, even if they are doped, are victims of this system.”

Rodchenkov only clams up once during the interview, and that is when his family - wife Veronika and children Vasily and Marina - are mentioned. They have not seen him for almost five years and, while his book strikes an optimistic note - “this won’t last forever - I am sure” - it is a subject too painful to dwell on. “Be my friend,” he says, suggesting a different topic.

It all makes you wonder if he regrets the path he took? “The alternative was a tomb,” he says. “I am happy to survive, to escape a grave.”