David Walsh is chief sportswriter with The Sunday Times, best known for his previous work on Lance Armstrong. In this latest book, he writes about the young Russian anti-doping official Vitaly Stepanov who tirelessly over many years fed information to WADA on Russian doping despite being married to top 800m runner Yuliya Rusanova who was herself doping. In fact, not only was he married to her, he was also feeding WADA regular information about her specific doping regime.

This is an utterly sad story on a number of levels. First and foremost, the extent of Russian doping across all sports has been utterly horrendous. No doubt many athletes like Rusanova would have preferred to run clean, but when running clean meant not making the cut as all your peers are doping it was (is?) a stark choice between your morals and your sporting career. Walsh uncovers the sordid depths of Russian doping, from the tier system of pharma support and "handling" of dirty samples depending on how promising an athlete was, to the Russian anti-doping agency being complicit in the whole sordid business.

Stepanov is a fairly minor player at the Russian anti-doping agency, but he takes his role seriously and believes vehemently that doping should not be allowed in Russian sport. The second aspect that makes this book such a sorry tale is that despite him feeding WADA (the World Anti-Doping Agency) information for many years, they were so tied up in their own international policies that nothing was done. It was only when Rusanova and Stepanov joined forces in their fight against doping and agreed to whistle-blow through a German TV documentary with secret recordings that the world sat up and took notice.

Any action movie worth its salt has a romantic thread weaved through it, and in The Russian Affair at its core is the strangely cold and seemingly mismatched marriage of Rusanova and Stepanov. Rusanova plays the villain of the stunning ice queen with a Russian business-like approach to her relationship with the dull, sober, serious, idealistic Stepanov.

It's an interesting book, which in retrospect makes me sad when I think of all the amazing Russian performances I've watched in the Olympics which now seem an utter sham. At times Walsh drags the story out a bit, but mostly it was pretty page-turning.

Bizarrely, in his epilogue Walsh focuses on the immediate response of Russia to the Stepanovs' whistle-blowing and their new life in the US, more or less missing the huge domino effect that their actions had on Russian sport. There is no mention of the 2015 indefinite ban for Russia from world athletics, nor the ban for Russia from all major world sporting events given in 2019, which seems like the obvious conclusion for the book.

He also publishes in an appendix a number of the emails Vitaly Stepanov sent to WADA over the years, which perhaps unveil another potential motive for his quest that's not touched on in the book. He (Stepanov) certainly didn't seem to be behind the door in asking for employment help outside of Russia from WADA - was a supported ticket to a better life in the US a potential driver behind his quest? I'm probably being harsh as he and his wife have ultimately been left with a lifetime of looking over their shoulders, but I do wonder how impartial Walsh has been in this book, given that in the introduction he tells us how he wrote the book with the Stepanovs' support as a way for both parties to make money.

3.5 stars - an interesting insight into Mother Russia and its priorities. ( )