J-Lab Episode 32: Exposing doping in sport, with Nick Harris of the Mail on Sunday

J-Lab

If you've seen Oscar-winning documentary Icarus, you’ll no doubt have been astounded by the scale of the state-sponsored doping of Russian athletes. And in this episode of J-Lab – a podcast brought to you by the Civic Journalism Lab at Newcastle University – our guest is Nick Harris, one of the two Mail on Sunday investigative journalists who exposed Grigory Radchenkov, head of the Moscow lab who was at the heart of the scheme. But in the last few years, Nick has been reporting stories that show how widespread doping and medicalisation is across many sports in many countries. Just recently he and colleagues revealed how UK Sport used more than 90 Olympic athletes as guinea pigs for an experimental ketones substance ahead of the London games in 2012. In this conversation, Nick explains the background to his reporting and offers his tips and advice to anyone interested in investigative work.