The “Cleanest” Olympics

Current Time reported Konstantin Volkov's recollection that a laboratory employee took his urine sample, handed him a different container already filled with urine, and told him, “We don't need accidents, so go turn this one in.” Volkov said the exchange took place when he came to submit his sample. The account is his reported recollection; the cited sources do not independently verify the exchange.

The 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics ran from July 19 to August 3. RFE/RL described the Games as the first and only Olympics since drug testing began in 1968 not to disqualify a single athlete for steroids or other performance-enhancing drugs. That characterization comes from retrospective reporting, rather than a contemporaneous anti-doping adjudication record.

The institutional setting had been established three years earlier. Current Time reported that, in 1977, the KGB's Fifth Directorate created the Eleventh Department, officially to “disrupt subversive actions by the enemy and hostile elements during the preparation and holding of the Olympics.” The same retrospective reporting said employees of the department also worked in the Moscow Anti-Doping Laboratory, which was accredited for the Games two weeks before they began.

RFE/RL and Current Time later reported allegations that laboratory employees replaced some athletes' urine samples with clean ones. The reporting placed that alleged practice inside the laboratory rather than treating the absence of disqualifications as proof that no prohibited substances had been used.

Vladimir Popov, a retired KGB lieutenant colonel, told Current Time that the USSR State Sports Committee used a “special program” to provide steroids to athletes whom coaches believed had the best chances for a brilliant career, strong scores and victories at major competitions. Popov said, “The team doctors, the senior coaches, everyone was in the loop about this.” The program remains an allegation without official corroboration in the cited reporting. Volkov said he replied, “Well, I don't have anything [in my urine]. I'm not scared.”