Revealed: how a Kenyan runner turned undercover agent to lift the lid on dopers

Special report A meeting in a New York coffee shop helped US investigators get the inside track on a network of doping and the agents that prey on vulnerable athletes

By Rob Draper
Sun 28 Jul 2024 03.00 EDT

Awinter’s day, 2015, New York. Investigator Victor Burgos turned over the conversation he was about to have in his mind. In the next minutes, he was either going to recruit an ally in the fight against anti-doping or have a hostile, frustrating encounter that would send him back to the drawing board. Chances were it would be the latter. The omertà of dopers matches the mafia. No one talks. Few inform on their peers.

He was meeting a distance runner who was blissfully unaware of what was coming. The man was superb by normal standards, his marathon ­personal best well within what might be regarded as world class. In Kenyan terms, though, he was a mid-ranker and never going to be an Olympic superstar. He also had tested positive for 19-­nortestosterone, a hardcore steroid.

The man appeared. Burgos approached him with a United States Anti-Doping Agency (Usada) business card in hand and a copy of the letter containing all the details of the positive test. Burgos introduced himself and was required to read the athlete his rights, especially regarding the opportunity to check the positive finding by having his B sample tested. (Laboratories always split an athlete’s urine sample, test half – the A sample – and leave half – the B sample – so that it can be used to corroborate the first test with the athlete and advisers present. It almost always produces the same result.) Burgos chose his words carefully. “This is not the end of the world,” Burgos recalls telling the athlete. “This doesn’t define who you are. If you made a mistake, we can talk about that.”

The way Burgos tells it, he was offering an opportunity to lessen the gravity of his punishment, an opportunity to provide “substantial assistance” to Usada to help catch other dopers. It is a provision of anti-doping rules open to all but rarely used, because most athletes remain in denial, insisting they have done nothing wrong and that their positive test is mistake. “He was shocked, and he was dishonest at the beginning,” said Burgos. “He said: ‘I don’t know how the substance entered my body, this is a lie.’” “Why don’t we take a walk,” suggested Burgos. “Let’s grab a coffee.”

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