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There are a number of shortcuts used by athletes and their coaches to cut corners: blood doping to increase red blood cells and enhance performance through increased oxygenation of the muscles; using human growth hormones to increase muscle mass, and taking oral turinabol, a steroid – resembling vitamin pills, turinabol breaks down in the body in days, meaning that it can avoid detection in the blood or urine samples that all Olympic medallists are required to give. It was, as Matt Majendie notes, “the drug of choice for many Russian athletes at London 2012 and for athletes around the world.”

Former 1500m runner Hannah England believed that the worst scandals were behind athletics by 2012. The 1500m race at London 2012, in particular, proved otherwise – the race was decimated by disqualifications because of doping.

Hannah came seventh in her semi-final, noting “one athlete from Turkey had failed a test already but ran a personal best, and another improved by something ludicrous like 15 seconds that year – you don’t do that unless you are 13.”

Since 2004, the IOC (International Olympic Committee) has undertaken to keep every test sample given at an Olympic games for a period of 8 years (now 10), allowing for any relevant scientific advances. This paid dividends when an effective test for turinabol was developed in 2013. It meant that samples from 2012’s London Olympics were able to be re-tested en masse in 2016. The results saw 2012’s 1500m gold and silver medallists disqualified.

Overall, 28 medals were retrospectively reallocated. Russia topped the reallocation table with 14 medals stripped, cutting its finally tally from 82 to 68.

In 2013, the doping story surfaced in a short article by then Daily Mail journalist Martha Kelner (now a Sky Sports correspondent). It was based on an interview with (since retired) long-jumper Greg Rutherford. Rutherford said he thought Russia wasn’t a suitable country to be hosting the athletics World Championships in Moscow that year because of the suspicions around doping. The article was spotted by athletics coach Oleg Popov, who, in the guise of a "Twitter egg", DM’d Martha from Russia to confirm these allegations and put her in contact with others who could too.

Central to the ARD documentary was the testimony of Vitaly and Yuliya Stepanov. Vitaly worked for RUSADA until 2011 when he was fired because of the questions he was asking. His wife Yuliya was a middle-distance runner who had been doping. Their polar opposite stances on doping didn’t make their courtship easy! However, they would become united in their aim to see "clean sport" prevail, despite this leading to them having to leave Russia for their own safety.

Vitaly was in contact with WADA and remained so after he left RUSADA. His efforts were finally rewarded a few weeks after the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi when WADA’s chief investigations officer put Vitaly in touch with Seppelt. A high stakes situation unfolded with Yulia risking her life by recording athletes, coaches and officials to gain evidence.

Vitaly and Yulia now live in an undisclosed location in the United States with their son, Robert. “Until Putin is not President, it is not safe to go back,” says Yuliya. “If they kill us in America, the whole world will know the truth why.”

As a result of the ARD documentary, WADA’s founding president Dick Pound started an investigation – the organisation’s first – into the allegations. Pound recruited cybercrime specialist Günter Younger to join him and sports lawyer Professor Richard H. McLaren. Among those they interviewed were the Stepanovs (whom Younger describes as “the biggest whistle-blowers in sport so far”), Rodchenkov and then sports minister (and until January this year, deputy Prime Minister) Vitaly Mutko, who literally shrugged off the criticisms he was told were coming.

The team’s report, published in 2015, was damning. Pound described the findings as reminiscent of an “inherited attitude from the old Cold War days” and recommended Russia’s suspension from the 2016 Rio Olympics. A subsequent ban on Russia competing as a nation remains in place and will – at the time of writing – affect the 2020 Olympics (now 2021) and the 2022 World Cup.