Dear Russia, BE BETTER AT CHEATING.
A letter to the nation now banned from the 2018 Olympics.
Russia’s Olympic team has been barred from the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
This scandal fascinated me. Hang on, I thought. Russia was able to beat doping tests at the 2014 Olympics? I could not WAIT to see the sophisticated technology that allowed them to beat the tests, you guys. This is a nation that wants to defeat America so badly that they’ll go to any length to accomplish it. Whether it’s dirty or clean doesn’t matter to them. (I can understand that, by the way. If a country hogged all the gold medals for literal decades I’d probably be mad, too.)
I was sure that the Russians had done something advanced. Maybe cycling out all the tainted blood with synthetic blood that would would not show on a urine test? Or perhaps evading the Olympic Committee testers with an elaborate maze of tunnels and KGB agents under the venues? Or, I dunno, employing the skyhook from The Dark Knight to remove the tainted samples before the Olympic Committee got their hands on them? The possibilities were endless.
And then I found out they passed bottles of pee through a hole in the wall.
RUSSIA. DAMN IT. REALLY?
You passed tainted bottles of urine THROUGH A HOLE IN THE WALL? Here I am thinking you’re this super secret and sophisticated organization. Spying, cheating, general shenanigans and mayhem. And then you go and pull this…this little gem as diagrammed by the New York Times.
Let’s break down that diagram.
First and foremost, you will see both secure and non-secure areas of the lab. Did the IOC not know who they were dealing with here? Uh, guys? Why would you not just rent THE WHOLE LAB. Or at least the whole floor. Host countries create literal villages for the Olympics, yet they can’t rent one entire lab?
And hey! Here’s an idea. Let’s have a non-secure room next to all the secure rooms. Great call, Jenkins! That seems like a completely legit idea.
And finally, the bait and switch. Russia passed the urine bottle through the hole to Dr. Rodchenkov AND TEAM, who just HAPPENED to to be mixing up a great batch of clean pee right next to the lab. How on EARTH did they have an entire team working on this in the next room? The IOC had to know they were there, right? They probably had the same feeling I do when my coworker sits down in the stall next to me to take a dump.
The obvious hero of that diagram is the arrow and red hole. THIS IS WHERE THE PEE WENT, YOU GUYS. Man, would I have loved to be a fly on the wall when the doctors for the Russian Olympic delegation created this plan while watching Porky’s at 2 a.m. and sipping Shmerrnoff. “Wait…guys. OMG. Guys. I GOT IT! We will pass the bad pee through A HOLE IN THE WALL…and pass back the good pee! Eureka! Or whatever the Russian equivalent of Eureka is!”
In conclusion,
Get better at cheating, Russia.
