Welcome back to bribes, swindle, or steel.

I'm Alexandra Rogge, and I'm really looking forward to today's podcast.

In anticipation of the Winter Olympics in Pyongchang that open on Friday,

I'm joined by Richard Conway to talk about doping in sports,

and in particular, the state-sponsored doping by the Russians that led to that country's exclusion

from this year's Winter Olympics. Richard is the sports news correspondent for BBC Sport in London.

He analyzes some of the biggest stories in sport and has done some phenomenal reporting.

I got to know Richard when I was involved in the farcical FIFA Independent Governance Committee,

and actually, Richard, will be able to tie Russian doping back to FIFA for us,

because all shoddy governance roads seem to lead back to FIFA. Richard, this is fascinating for me.

Thank you for joining me.

Pleasure to join you, Alexandria.

Let's talk about the Russians.

Can you describe how that story broke and what we learned about their misconduct?

Okay, so this has been going on now for just over three years.

It was back in December of 2014, German broadcaster ARD.

It released a documentary now.

It had lots of accounts from Russian athletes, coaches, anti-doping officials.

And the message from them was quite clear.

This was about the Russian government being alleged to have helped procure formhancing drugs for athletes and then covering up

positive test results. Now, it was said that this was, it stretched back to London 2012,

the Olympics there. It had certainly taken place as it transpired. The Sochi Olympics in 2013 had been affected, and a whole range

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