First Medal of Rio Olympics Deserves to Go to ... a Whistle-Blower

Who knew that the hero of the Rio Games would be a gray-haired, mustachioed Russian in his late 50s, who used his scientific brilliance not to search for a disease’s cure but to help Russians win Olympic medals by dissolving banned performance-enhancing drugs into Chivas and vermouth?

A hero who, under the cloak of night, switched drug-tainted urine for clean urine so that athletes who had doped wouldn’t test positive.

If that doesn’t sound like a character you could cheer for, well, then, you’re missing the big picture in this chapter of the long-running story of doping in sports. Because if this saga is ever going to have a semblance of a happy ending, it needs more heroes like this one. Flawed heroes, yes, but ones whose eventual contribution to clean sport is immeasurable.

This Rio hero is Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, the former director of Russia’s antidoping lab, who helped athletes dope and cover up their drug use because his government asked him to. What makes him a hero in today’s Olympic movement — one of the current heroes, I should say — is that he was brave enough to blow the whistle on Russia’s state-sponsored doping program. He spilled the details to The New York Times in May, prompting the World Anti-Doping Agency to investigate his claims and, two months later, to validate them in a report made public on Monday.

Because Rodchenkov told his story, there just might be fewer dopers competing in the Rio Games next month. His efforts could also embolden other whistle-blowers to come forward and expose cheating in sports. This could be a watershed moment for Olympic sport in its longstanding battle with dopers.

But that will happen only if the International Olympic Committee backs up the efforts of these whistle-blowers and punishes Russia appropriately, now that the world knows the Russian government was in on the whole doping program. Even top Russian government officials were involved in the scheme to dominate Olympic sports, with the deputy minister for sport personally deciding which failed doping tests to cover up.

Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee, and the I.O.C.’s executive board met on Tuesday to begin discussing Russia’s fate, announcing afterward that the committee was considering its legal options for discipline and had established a five-person disciplinary commission to assess the facts of the case.

But here was the gist of the meeting: After more reams of dark details of Russian state-sponsored doping were revealed in Monday’s 97-page WADA report, Bach and the I.O.C. will decide whether any Russians should compete in Rio.

Bach talked tough before the meeting.

“The findings of the report show a shocking and unprecedented attack on the integrity of sport and on the Olympic Games,” Bach said in a statement Monday. “Therefore, the I.O.C. will not hesitate to take the toughest sanctions available against any individual or organization implicated.”

The Russian track and field federation was barred from the Games in the wake of revelations of state-sponsored doping of its competitors, which were made public in a WADA report last November, the first of two WADA reports about widespread cheating in Russia.

The basis of that investigation? Information from whistle-blowers.

The heroes in that case were Vitaly Stepanov, who used to work at the Russian antidoping agency, and his wife, Yuliya Stepanova, a runner who had doped under the Russian system. They secretly recorded Russian coaches and athletes talking about their doping, then they gave the information and told their stories to ARD, a German broadcaster that aired a blockbuster documentary on Russian doping in 2014.

With their young son, the Stepanovs fled Russia and are now living in the United States, fearing for their lives, with good reason. In doing the right thing by exposing Russia’s doping program, they took on a country where winning at all costs was the mantra. Rodchenkov took the same risks for speaking out against Russia’s doping machine.

Knowing all that, the I.O.C. should slap Russia with a swift and stinging ban — on Tuesday, the organization said it was weighing that possibility — but it takes guts to do so. It takes someone who will champion these whistle-blowers so the efforts of those who spoke out mean something. So more athletes feel comfortable coming forward to talk about the underbelly of sports.

The antidoping agencies of at least 10 nations, including the United States, Germany and Canada, have asked for the I.O.C. to bar the entire Russian delegation from Rio. Some clean athletes have voiced their opinions, too.

“As an athlete going to Rio, I would not like to be competing against Russian swimmers because I wouldn’t have faith that they hadn’t been doping,” Kirsty Coventry, a two-time Olympic gold medalist for Zimbabwe and a member of the I.O.C. athletes’ commission, told me in a telephone conversation.

Bach and the I.O.C. could kick out the Russian delegation. That would be the simplest way to make a point. Or they could do what the I.O.C. does best, and that’s let international sports federations do the dirty work. The federations could be charged with picking through the mass of Russian cheaters to choose clean athletes, case by case, to compete in Rio. With more than 25 federations, that process could drag on forever.

Whatever Bach does, he at least should acknowledge the value of the whistle-blowers in all of this mess, and thank them for their work. Without them, Russian athletes who have doped would very likely have won medals in Rio — perhaps only to have those medals snatched back years later, when the drug testers finally caught up with them. (That does not mean doped-up athletes from other countries won’t become champions in Rio.)

It would be a nice touch, too, if Bach acknowledged the yawning holes in the antidoping system, gaps that allowed the Russians to be so bold in their cheating, and pushed forward with a plan for a truly independent antidoping organization that would do all the testing and the follow-up. We know now that individual nations involved in the testing of their own athletes are so easily corrupted.

Rodchenkov’s late-night switching of urine samples at the 2014 Sochi Games was just a snapshot of Russia’s duplicity. The whole well-organized scheme makes Lance Armstrong’s doping, once labeled by the United States Anti-Doping Agency as “the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen,” look as if it were run by teenagers in a high school chemistry class.

The I.O.C. is facing perhaps the biggest doping scandal in sports history. The whistle-blowers are holding their breath. The Russians and clean athletes are, too.

All while Bach is sitting at his laptop, crafting the ending to this hero’s play.

The Rio Games are less than three weeks away. He’d better type fast.