‘Icarus: The Aftermath’ Film Review: Sequel to Oscar-Winning Documentary Finds Emotion in Sporting Scandal
thewrap.comnever doped its athletes, Putin’s administration shifted to claiming that Rodchenkov was a rogue agent who did it all himself and is now a traitor.
The evidence clearly suggests otherwise, but the Olympic ban is essentially toothless: It prohibits the Russian Olympic committee from being part of the games but allows athletes to compete under the “Olympic athletes from Russia” banner. “There was no ban,” says one international doping official. “It’s nonsense.”Rodchenkov, meanwhile, tries to retrieve the yearly diaries he’s been keeping since 1973, which contain copious real-time evidence of the Russian program.
He’s secured them somewhere in Moscow and a friend uses the FIFA World Cup in Russia as a cover to retrieve them, in a sequence that Rodchenkov says is “like James Bond style.”He drops more details of the Russian program along the way, and they’re downright crazy: He disguised a doping detector as a coffee bar on a boat at the Seoul Olympics in 1988 … After competing, athletes were told to pee in their pants as quickly as possible, then to chug as many beers as they could to dilute their urine before they’re tested …Steroids leave traces in the intestines that can be detected for years, but if you dissolve them in alcohol, you can swirl the mixture in your mouth and not be detectable – so Rodchenkov created what he called “duchess cocktails,” with the performance-enhancing drugs mixed with whiskey for male athletes and martinis for female ones.On one level, “Icarus: The Aftermath” tells a distressingly familiar story: Russia gets caught, Russia denies, Russia is sanctioned, Russia appeals, the sanctions are reduced – repeat as needed.
Read more on thewrap.com