March: Icarus

“Doped-Up Authorship”

Travis Vogan (University of Iowa)

This last December, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) banned Russia’s entire national team from the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in South Korea because of an intricate state-run doping program. The unprecedented punishment—levied for an unprecedented offense—forbade Russian officials from attending the event and removed the nation’s flag from its Opening Ceremonies. It is difficult, of course, to divorce the IOC judgment—which Russia has chalked up to a politicized conspiracy that contradicts the Olympics’ apolitical pretensions—from the country’s alleged meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. While Russia cuts a particularly suspicious figure in contemporary global politics, the nation’s athletic programs have long been suspected of fostering performance enhancing drugs, and, just as important, developing inventive ways of evading detection.

Released by Netflix in August 2017, Bryan Fogel’s Icarus offers some useful context for understanding this controversy and the history of doping in sport. The documentary begins as a first-person exposé on the ease with which well-resourced athletes can use performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) without being caught. But the film quickly transforms into a far more compelling investigation of Russia’s intricate doping practices. Icarus provides a glimpse into the cloak and dagger efforts Russia allegedly took to secure an edge in international competition. Beyond the tale it weaves, Icarus illustrates some of the aesthetic and ethical pitfalls that mark first-person documentaries in which filmmakers’ aggressive cultivation of their personal brands butts up against their subject matter and sources.

Icarus opens with a montage of photos and audio clips of since-exposed athletes denying the use of PEDs along with George Orwell’s oft-quoted passage: “In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” The unambiguous sequence heavy-handedly suggests sport has become such a realm of “universal deceit” that they could use some truth-tellers. Fogel, a serious amateur cyclist who idolized Lance Armstrong and was devastated to learn of his transgressions, nominates himself to get the ball rolling. He set out to prove the systems in place to test athletes were “bullshit” by competing in France’s Haute Route—the world’s most strenuous amateur cycling competition—with the aid of PEDs and without being caught. Fogel presents his gambit along the lines of Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me (2004), and the film follows him as he trains, dopes, and competes. The filmmaker’s approach, however, swaps Spurlock’s affable rube persona for that of a mostly grating bro who continually emphasizes how “insane” his project is while wincing in pain for the camera as he shoots drugs into his ass.

Fogel recruited a series of advisors to help create a doping program and avoid testing positive, a group that includes Don Catlin, the former director of UCLA’s Olympic Analytical Laboratory. When Catlin gets cold feed—understandably concerned about how participating in such a stunt might harm his professional credibility—he connects Fogel with Grigory Rodchenkov. Like Fogel, Rodchenkov was once a serious amateur athlete who didn’t quite have the stuff to go professional—even with the help of PEDs. He became a chemist and eventually ran Russia’s anti-doping lab. Depicted as a quirky mad scientist, Rodchenkov agrees to help Fogel without reservation. In fact, the anti-doping expert seems to have a passion and flair for getting around drug tests. “I am mafia. This is mafia,” he drolly says while arranging tubes of Fogel’s urine in preparation for the Haute Route tests. Their experiment, however, ends on a disappointing note when Fogel’s doped-up performance produces worse results than when he competed clean the previous year.

It seems the story might end at that point—Fogel proved he could get around drug tests, made a cool Russian friend, and discovered that no amount of drugs could transform him into a professional-grade athlete. But soon thereafter, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) charged Rodchenkov’s lab with orchestrating a doping program—allegations that forced Rodchenkov to resign and fear for his life. At this point, Icarus pivots away from Fogel’s experiment and becomes an investigation into the system Rodchenkov oversaw. The filmmaker aids Rodchenkov’s passage into the United States and stows him away in an undisclosed location. Rodchenkov has good reason to be worried. Shortly after his resignation, his colleague and friend Nikita Kamayev died of a mysterious heart attack at 52—a death many suspected was an assassination.

Icarus makes no disclosure of Fogel and Rodchenkov’s agreement (assuming they made one), but it seems likely Fogel explicitly or implicitly made arrangements to help Rodchenkov hide in exchange for his continued cooperation in the film. The filmmaker brokers Rodchenkov’s transformation into a whistleblower who details the sophisticated doping program he led that helped Russia to dominate the 2014 Winter Olympic Games it hosted in Sochi. Rodchenkov links the program all the way to Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutkov—who has since been elevated to Deputy Prime Minister—and Vladimir Putin.

Fogel certainly stumbled onto a great story. But the filmmaker dulls its impact by insisting that he remain front and center. Why, for instance, did he persist in including the portion about his mostly failed and ultimately rather mundane doping experiment as the film’s first act when Rodchenkov’s story is so much more compelling, important, and textured? The introductory portion and narrative pivot, I suppose, may heighten the film’s dramatic pull. I, however, am far more interested in the story of what might be the greatest ever Olympic conspiracy than an amateur cyclist who decides to try PEDs to prove an obvious point about ineffectual drug testing protocols—one that is reinforced every time we learn of yet another athlete who has spent years doping.

While Rodchenkov and his story are gripping, Fogel’s role and presence seem both forced and ethically suspect. The documentarian, for instance, served as an intermediary between Rodchenkov and lawyers when the scientist was subpoenaed by the Department of Justice to discuss his role in the doping conspiracy. Fogel simultaneously helped Rodchenkov tell his story to the New York Times, which used it to publish a May 2016 story on the conspiracy—a report that is, incidentally, far more informative than Icarus. The Department of Justice, however, was not privy to Rodchenkov’s collaboration with the Times. As a result, the miffed agency walked back on the arrangement it promised the scientist in exchange for his cooperation. Icarus does not detail precisely what agreement the DOJ annulled, but it seems only to have potentially increased Rodchenkov’s vulnerability. The Times report mentions Fogel’s role in organizing its conversations with Rodchenkov and his documentary project, providing some advance publicity for both. The article is far from sponsored content, but Fogel and his project certainly benefitted from ensuring Rodchenkov talked to the Times. It is unclear what Rodchenkov gained outside of perhaps discouraging assassination attempts by broadcasting his fears for his life.

Icarus does, however, make some interesting points. It outlines, for instance, how Russia’s drug-fueled success in the 2014 Winter Olympics spiked Putin’s previously sagging approval ratings. This sudden surge in popularity, Rodchenkov suggests, emboldened Putin to invade Ukraine shortly after the Olympics. Rodchenkov never expresses much in the way of remorse for masterminding the doping program. In fact, he seems proud of the clever strategies he pioneered. But he does lament the political and military efforts he indirectly aided. The Russian government has unsurprisingly denied the existence of a state-run doping program and dismissed Rodchenkov as an unstable lone wolf. Putin condemned his claims as “the slander of a turncoat.” The fact that Mutkov has since been promoted from Minister of Sport to Deputy Prime Minister of the entire nation suggests that Russia, if anything, has doubled down on its denials.

Icarus’s interesting moments, though, are often undercut by Fogel’s continued insistence on inserting himself into a story to which he does not always seem relevant or even particularly helpful. I was left wondering what this film ultimately seeks to achieve. It is obvious Fogel has seen a bunch of mainstream documentaries; it is also clear that he hasn’t made any. Icarus demonstrates much of the hubris its title references.