Russia's secret Olympic doping agents

Russia's secret Olympic doping agents

Russia's state-sponsored doping regime was exposed by the release of the McLaren report on Tuesday morning.

The investigation by the World Anti-Doping Agency into Russia's behaviour during the London 2012 and Sochi 2014 Olympics found the country guilty of cheating across a majority of sports.

The most fascinating thing is how they actually did it - and got away with it.

It's a story of deception, espionage and disguise.

Russia's secret Olympic doping agents

1. Russian athletes gave clean urine samples well ahead of the Olympics, way before they went anywhere near performance enhancing drugs.

2. Russia then froze those clean samples for safe-keeping, leaving their athletes free to dope.

3. During the Olympics, the Russian competitors peed in a cup supervised by an officer - just like all other participating athletes.

4. And this is where it all becomes a bit James Bond. The samples were smuggled out of a lab through a mouse hole and taken away by someone in the Russian Security Service, who was disguised as a sewage engineer.

5. Then, the supposedly tamperproof lids on the drug-positive bottles were removed and the contents replaced with the defrosted clean samples.

6. The samples smuggled back into the lab now appeared to be drug-free, while the athlete themselves were anything but.

In all, 580 positive tests were covered up across 30 different sports.

Now all eyes are on the International Olympic Committee to decide whether it'll slap a complete ban on all Russian athletes at Rio.

Newshub.