How Netflix’s ‘Icarus’ Helped Lead to the Russian Olympic Ban

If you’ve been following the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, you’ve surely noticed something strange about the Russian athletes. Like how they’re not competing for Russia. They’re competing as “Olympic Athletes from Russia” or OAR, under the Olympics flag rather than that of their homeland. Any medals they win will not be credited to Russia, either this year or historically.

The big questions is: why? Why this soft ban on Russia at the Olympics? The answer, somewhat surprisingly, has a lot to do with Icarus, the documentary from Netflix currently nominated for an Oscar. Director Bryan Fogel’s movie about performance-enhancing drugs in sports initially began as a movie about cycling, but by following a breadcrumb trail through the murky world of international sports doping, Fogel ended up waist-deep in one of the biggest athletic scandals of all time, one that touched an authoritarian regime, international politics, and even the possibility of murder. Icarus is a fascinating movie, yes, but it became embroiled in international news pretty much by accident. How did this all go down? Here are some questions and answers as you stream Icarus on Netflix.

Who Is Bryan Fogel and What Movie Did He Set Out to Make?

Fogel is an American actor/filmmaker/playwright whose biggest claim to fame before Icarus was writing and starring in the off-Broadway play Jewtopia, which eventually got made into a movie. He’s also apparently an amateur cyclist by avocation, which led him to the idea for Icarus. After the Lance Armstrong scandal and other doping controversies in international cycling, Fogel set out to make a documentary where he would take performance-enhancing substances for a year and attempt to improve his position on a notoriously punishing road race. Sort of like a Morgan Spurlock-style Super-Size Me for cycling. This provides the first half-hour of the movie, with the skeleton of the original thesis still intact. It seems that Fogel was seeking to make a movie that would show that even while doping for a year, he couldn’t replicate the success of these elite cyclists. Whether that was going to end up being an apologia for Armstrong or not we can only speculate, because about 35 minutes into the movie, the whole thing takes a sharp left turn.

What Does ‘Doping’ Refer To?

“Doping,” in this case, refers to the use of any kind of banned performance-enhancing substance in athletic competition. In the United States, the issue of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) was most prevalent in baseball (the so-called Steroid Era where superstars like Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds were all found to have been taking illegal steroids for years) and, to a lesser extent in football. Elsewhere, the more internationally-used term “doping” has been applied to PED use from the likes of Lance Armstrong (cycling), Marion Jones (track and field), and Maria Sharapova (tennis).

Doping in international competitions like the Olympics has been an issue for decades, and it’s been made more thorny by the fact that countries had to be trusted to police their own athletes and ferrett out any illegal doping themselves. Given how seriously many of these countries take Olympic success, it’s hard to trust them to individually test their own athletes for banned substances. Which is why the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) exists.

Who Is Grigory Rodchenkov?

In trying to come up with his doping regimen for cycling, Fogel reached out to Don Catlin, the founder of the UCLA Olympic Lab, and one of the founders of modern-day drug testing in sports. After giving some advice for how to pull this off, Catlin got cold feet over what participating in such a ruse might do to his reputation as a leading anti-doping force in sports. So he referred Fogel to his good friend Grigory Rodchenkov, the head of Russia’s drug-testing laboratory. If you think that makes it sound like Rodchenkov might be more ethically pliable when it comes to doping, well, you’d be wildly underestimating the situation.

As Fogel quickly learned, Rodchenkov wasn’t so much running a drug-testing lab in Russia as he was running an elaborate system to help Russian athletes avoid positive drug tests. Essentially, Rodchenkov was running interference between the athletes and WADA. He enthusiastically jumped at the chance to help Fogel in his Super Dope Me request.

Rodchenkov is an interesting character. He looks like Barney Miller, but he acts like Jack Black’s character from the recent Netflix movie (platform synergy!) The Polka King. Just a very obvious scammer with a zeal for doing his job, even if doing his job is a wildly shady and illegal endeavor.

How Does This Tie Into the Russian Olympic Ban?

So almost halfway through the movie — in November of 2015 — the story breaks internationally of a state-sponsored doping scandal in Russia, and Rodchenkov is squarely in the middle of it. It alleged a years-long program of systemic doping in Russia that was run by the state. With Fogel continuing to make his film, he follows Rodchenkov as he goes from major person of interest in the investigation to turning whistleblower on the whole Russian program. Ultimately, he gave his information to the New York Times, which published an exposé in May of 2016. In the article, Rodchenkov said that doping experts collaborated with Russia’s intelligence service on a state-sponsored doping program that swapped out urine sampled through a hole in the lab’s wall. (!) Russian athletes from the 2014 winter games in Sochi were heavily implicated.

The investigation into these claims by WADA uncovered collaboration by Russian officials and faced many roadblocks and other cover-up tactics. Meanwhile, Rodchenkov feared for his life and fled to the Unites States, where he would eventually end up in protective custody, after two other men associated with Rodchenkov died under suspicious circumstances.

In summer 2016, the International Olympic Committee declined accreditation from the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio to any Russian official or athlete implicated in their report(111 athletes in total were removed from the Russian delegation), though they stopped short of following WADA’s recommendation to ban Russia from the 2016 Games entirely. And in December of 2017, the IOC announced that the Russian Olympic Committee had been suspended from the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.

Why Ban Russia But Not Its Athletes?

Athletes who had no drug violations and whose drug-testing history was deemed above reproach were not punished, and so they’ve been allowed to compete under the Olympic flag as “Olympic Athletes from Russia.” Neither the Russian flag nor its national anthem would be present at the Games. For Russia’s these are the OAR Olympics.

Have Athletes Competed Without a Nation Before?

Yes, though usually for political reasons. When countries are undergoing political turmoil, political transitions, or United Nations sanctions, their athletes have been allowed to participate in the Games as Independent Olympians. Also, back in 1992, in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, athletes from Russia and the former Soviet republics were allowed to compete together, also under the Olympic flag, as the “Unified Team,” at the Winter Olympics in Albertville, France, and the Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain.

What Does ‘Icarus’ Refer To?

Icarus, in Greek mythology, was the son of Daedalus, who had created the Labyrinth on Crete. In order to escape Crete, Daedelus crafted for his son wings made of wax and feathers. Icarus flew to freedom on his wings, but he ignored his father’s advice and flew too high, where the sun’s heat melted the wax and Icarus fell into the sea and drowned. The story of Icarus is a cautionary tale about hubris, and it’s where the term “flying too close to the sun” comes from. In the film, obviously, the hubris of the athletes and the state-sponsored doping programs that shielded them, could be easily applied to the Icarus tale.

Does This Mean ‘Icarus’ Is The Frontrunner to Win the Oscar?

It’s certainly doesn’t hurt. Super-Size Me was got nominated for the Oscar in 2004, but it didn’t win. Citizenfour, however, did win in 2014, in part because it made headlines and found itself at the center of a blockbuster news story. The Russian doping scandal is nowhere near the news story that Edward Snowden was, but the fact remains that a documentary that effects real-world events can be viewed as more “important,” and certainly in this year’s wide-open doc race, that could be the leg up Icarus needs.

Stream Icarus on Netflix