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dark
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Suicide attempt
Johan oli tarina. Osin tämä oli tuttu jo jostain parin vuoden takaisesta Kuukausiliitteen jutusta. Kirja oli kiinnostava ja nopeatempoinen pituudestaan huolimatta, joskin eri virastojen nimilyhenteet saivat välillä pään pyörälle. Kirjan englanninkielinen nimi on jotain että ”how I brought down Putin’s doping empire” tms mikä indikoi Rodchenkovin olleen tarinan sankari jo ennen kuin asiat menivät hänen kohdallaan pieleen. Hänen suhtautumisensa dopingiin onkin erikoinen osa kirjaa, sillä hän tavallaan sekä ihannoi että puhuu sen puolesta mutta myös lopulta on se avainhahmo joka paljasti tuon dopingvyyhdin ja sanoo olevansa oikealla, totuuden puhujien puolella.
Sopiva luettava pian Pohjois-Koreasta kertovan kirjan jälkeen – yhtymäkohtia valtioiden välillä on edelleen melko paljon.
Sopiva luettava pian Pohjois-Koreasta kertovan kirjan jälkeen – yhtymäkohtia valtioiden välillä on edelleen melko paljon.
informative
medium-paced
Now, this is a very tricky book to rate. For the content, for the utter slap in the face of those athletes who do their best without doping, I want to give zero stars. For the content that is not really new if you've seen "Icarus", I would give 3 stars. But I guess it's the new content and the way this makes for a fast, extremely interesting read, I've decided this gets 4 stars.
Rodchenkov himself is a very troubling storyteller. While he doesn't pretend to be innocent, especially in the end when he's turned into a whistleblower, it feels he wants to be seen as a better person than he is. After all, he spent years manipulating doping tests and results, cheating the system, and from what I can tell, did not feel bad about it. So, even though he now wants to air all the dirty laundry Russia has, go into details about how they cheated and lied to everyone who's ever cared about sports, you can't take his story entirely as it is. I mean, if the loop around him hadn't started to close in, would he still keep doing what he did? Would we still be watching Russian athletes, doped to the max, win gold medals while those who compete clean lose to them?
I guess the biggest merit this book has is in detailing out the extent of Russia's deceit. Because really, the systematic, state-run manipulation has been going on for decades and I think it was impossible to understand just from the articles paraphrasing the McLaren report. At times it was difficult to keep up with what was going on as things get pretty detailed and you'd need to understand chemistry and how the entire doping control process works to be able to keep up with every single move and detail.
But really, if you care about sports, if you've watched the documentary and want to know more about what has been going on in Russia all these years, this book gives great insight into that. And it also makes you wonder if something like this is going on somewhere else (probably is) and when that is going to blow over.
Rodchenkov himself is a very troubling storyteller. While he doesn't pretend to be innocent, especially in the end when he's turned into a whistleblower, it feels he wants to be seen as a better person than he is. After all, he spent years manipulating doping tests and results, cheating the system, and from what I can tell, did not feel bad about it. So, even though he now wants to air all the dirty laundry Russia has, go into details about how they cheated and lied to everyone who's ever cared about sports, you can't take his story entirely as it is. I mean, if the loop around him hadn't started to close in, would he still keep doing what he did? Would we still be watching Russian athletes, doped to the max, win gold medals while those who compete clean lose to them?
I guess the biggest merit this book has is in detailing out the extent of Russia's deceit. Because really, the systematic, state-run manipulation has been going on for decades and I think it was impossible to understand just from the articles paraphrasing the McLaren report. At times it was difficult to keep up with what was going on as things get pretty detailed and you'd need to understand chemistry and how the entire doping control process works to be able to keep up with every single move and detail.
But really, if you care about sports, if you've watched the documentary and want to know more about what has been going on in Russia all these years, this book gives great insight into that. And it also makes you wonder if something like this is going on somewhere else (probably is) and when that is going to blow over.
This was fascinating. It really makes you lose faith in "clean sport." Rodchenkov is hard to figure out. He calls the athletes "cheaters" and "abusers" for doping, but also explains multiple times why doping is necessary and not (necessarily) harmful. I enjoyed reading a book from the perspective of sometime who isn't hard-core anti-doping, for once. (To be clear, I'm not pro-doping! But I think the topic is more interesting and nuanced than a bunch of angry slogans.)