MOSCOW (AP) — Even as Russia is swept by one doping scandal after another, the national anti-doping laboratory stands almost idle.
Hidden behind a tall fence, a security checkpoint and an anonymous facade on a Moscow sidestreet, the lab's 52 workers have tested just 15 blood samples this year with their cutting-edge machines because the World Anti-Doping Agency has banned them from doing most of their work.
The reason is Grigory Rodchenkov, the mustachioed scientist who was the lab's director until a WADA commission's report in November accused him of covering up doping by star Russian athletes and destroying more than 1,400 samples to keep them from investigators.