They are about two inches wide, squarish, and five inches tall. They hail from the Toggenburg valley of northeast Switzerland, and they are held in the highest regard by experts around the world.
They are glass bottles used to hold athletes’ urine samples, and they are central to the account of a former Russian antidoping official who claims that the host country executed an elaborate doping operation at the 2014 Sochi Olympics — imperceptibly switching out dirty urine from the squat containers long thought to be tamper proof.
“I tried to break into these bottles years ago and couldn’t do it,” Don Catlin, the former head of the U.