Another Russia scandal

As a narrative arc, the Netflix documentary Icarus is a mess. Author/playwright Bryan Fogel, an accomplished amateur cyclist, was inspired by notorious professional cycling doper Lance Armstrong's successful demonstration that drug testing could be beaten to see whether he could duplicate that feat at his level of competition. So he tried doping, got good advice on how to beat the system, and filmed himself sticking a needle in his butt, repeatedly.

Fogel's mentors in the dope detection business put him in touch with Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, the head of Russia's anti-doping lab and the guy who oversaw drug testing at the Sochi Olympics where Russian athletes won an unprecedented 13 golds. Vladimir Putin awarded Rodchenkov an Order of Friendship after that accomplishment.

For reasons that the movie never makes clear, Rodchenkov involved himself gleefully in Fogel's doping experiment, including welcoming the filmmaker into his home and life in Moscow -- along with his urine samples. The two men became buddies.

And then a World Anti-Doping Association (WADA) investigation concluded that there was something rotten about the Sochi drug monitoring. Rodchenkov's world starts to collapse; he fears he'll be made to take the fall for this insult to Russian pride. He has been locked up previously when Russian sport was under threat; he knows the secret police, the FSB, are looking at him.

So he takes off for Los Angeles to join his friend Fogel, carrying a hard drive of doping records and samples of the tools for urine sample swapping. Back in Moscow, at least one other mid-level sports doping figure turns up dead. The film recounts the Fogel and Rodchenkov's struggle to get protection from US legal authorities, convince WADA (however unwelcome they may find the information) that he's got the goods, and finally how he took the story to the New York Times which continues to follow the story. Although the evidence is close to irrefutable, international sports bodies, including the International Olympic Committee and FIFA which runs World Cup football, have so far chosen to protect Russian inclusion over the truth of their sports' corruption. Rodchenkov ends up under "witness protection," hidden somewhere in the United States.

I can only wonder whether Rodchenkov worries whether somewhere among the nest of con-men that surround our Putin-admiring president, there's an official willing to sell out his location to the FSB. After all, apparently a former National Security Advisor was discussing a kidnapping for pay for the Turks...

The movie could have used a lot of tightening up. Fogel's original project gets lost; international intrigue takes over. When/if the Russian doping saga becomes more resolved, I would not be surprised if there's a deeper remake; Rodchenkov is a fascinating figure. Until then, this is certainly worth a couple of hours.