Life on the Run

age of 86. Now on BBC News, the story of Yulia

Stepanova, the Russian athlete who exposed the state-sponsored doping

scandal in Life On The Run. Yulia Stepanova, Russian champion,

world-class athlete turned whistle-blower. Her contribution to

sport and the fight against doping is beyond comparison. Nobody has

done more for the anti-doping movement. Branded a traitor in her

motherland. She and her husband exposed cheating in Russia on a

colossal scale. Now they live in secret, fearing for their lives.

Unlikely to ever return home. The young family seem completely at

home in this average American claim. No one gives them a second glance.

This is Yulia Stepanova and Vitaly Stepanov, Amberley athlete and an

anti-doping officer. -- and elite athlete. Their shocking revelations

exposed the dirty secrets of Russian athletics. Three damning reports

commissioned by the world anti-doping agency. Much of them

based on the testimony of this couple. It found that many athletes

have taken illegal drugs between 2011 and 2015. Four years sports

competitions have been hijacked by the Russians. Coaches and athletes

have been playing on an uneven field. Sports fans and spectators

have been deceived. It is time that stops. This yes, stops. For Russia

there was humiliation and a ban on hundreds of athletes from the view

Olympics. But President Vladimir Putin remains defiant. He believes

his sports men and women happen victims of double standards and

political interference. I travelled to the US to meet them,

I can see exactly where. They have spent the last two years staying

under the radar. -- I can see. Why did they take such extraordinary

risks that force them to lead a life on the run? Thousands of miles from

home, they may never return to Russia.

Yulia Stepanova was brought up on the edge of an industrial estate in

western Russia. To begin with, she did not have time for running. In

fact, she did not have much time for the childhood at all.

This couple worked in a tyre factory and when they were not on the

production line they were busy tending to their allotment to feed

the family. But when she was 13, Yulia Stepanova

defied her father in came here. Athletics became her escape. She

began to excel at the hundred metres, winning regions all over --

winning races all over the region. But then she got a chest infection

and spent three months in hospital. Getting back on form was going to be

a problem. Her coach, however, had a solution. The Gloucester Road. The

banned drug helped her cut a remarkable three seconds of her

personal best -- to trust a run. In the Russian sports system there

is very little space for personality or individuality. It is like the

Army. Very soon Russian coaches start to use performance enhancing

drugs. If you want to survive in sport you need to be inside the

system. There are very few opportunities to go up in Russian

sports and not to be inside the system. In many ways, Russian

athletes are part of the system. Once she was on the national team,

she was sent to see a sports scientist who knew about doping.

Then a chance encounter changed everything. At him race meeting, she

met Vitaly Stepanov, one person in the system who was not prepared to

turn a blind eye. He was an idealistic young officer at Russia's

anti-doping agency, but he got the inside track on his very first date

with Yulia Stepanova. When I met Yulia Stepanova and had

an honest conversation with her I understood that I was an idiot. We

were not there to fix it we were there to follow the goal of Russian

sports, which is to win medals. The Russian anti-doping agency was part

of that. A dirty athlete and a crusader for a clean sport, it was

unlikely combination. But two months later they got married. Somehow they

stuck together despite frequent rows about Yulia Stepanova's doping. He

believes in clean sport and is totally committed to it. He sees

corruption and he is told that is how it is and you're not want to

change it. He realises that he is probably not, but he faces a choice,

do I confront this and try to expose it or do I just go with the tide. He

decided to confront it, to swim against the tide. So Vitaly Stepanov

wrote to the Russian anti-doping agency about the culture. You cannot

make a mistake in the 800 metres, it is fatal. It is the fastest tactical

race in the programme. Meanwhile his doping wife went from strength to

strength. At the World Championships in South Korea, Yulia Stepanova

competed alongside some of the finest runners in the sport. But her

performance arose suspicions. I thought she would not be a threat at

all. I led the hallway in the semifinal and just at the end I got

taken over by two girls, one of whom was Yulia Stepanova. It is the

Russian showing better form here... I was very shocked to see her in

front of me. She may have done enough. We will

see how the semifinals pan out... After the event she looked very

guilty. I said to my husband that I thought she was cheating, I think

she looks very sorry for me. From that moment on she almost could not

look me in the eyes. Eventually, the authorities called

top. The international athletics Federation gave her a two-year

suspension. After irregularities were detected in her blood samples.

She joined Vitaly Stepanov by writing to the world anti-doping

agency, but her ten page confession was ignored. She needed more proof.

She began secretly taping officials and fellow athletes on her mobile

phone. We cannot play the audio from this footage because of ongoing

legal appeals. Here the notorious Doctor boasts how his drugs have

turbo-charged her performance. After the recording was it on German

TV, there was finally action. The agency said it did not have the

legal powers to investigate the allegations before this point. Since

then they have commissioned the report sent to Russian doping. --

the reports. For those security the couple left their homeland and now

live in the US, leading a hand to mouth existence. For safety reasons

we agreed that we would not film in their place, they are worried about

their security. I can tell you that it is in a local housing block in a

not very nice part of town, it is very basic.

Training alone is far from ideal for an athlete athlete 's -- and elite

athlete. She had hoped to compete under the mutual flag at the Rio

Olympics, but the IOC refused because of her doping past. World

sporting agencies have been lukewarm in their responses. Some people

would prefer that we do not exist and that we did not share what we

know. There are corrupt people in those organisations and their goals

are not to promote Olympic values, they are all is to steal money. The

classic sports structure and system does not want whistle-blowers coming

for word because it brings bad news about sport, and that is contrary to

what they want and it ultimately hurts the brand. In Russia, the

whistle-blower got a cold reception. The Kremlin called her a Judas and

the press attacked as a money grabbing traitor. Online, some even

called for her execution. Russian history is full of stories of

betrayal. There is a famous one about a schoolboy who informed on

his own barber to Josef Stalin's police. Some are calling Yulia

Stepanova a modern-day example, selling out her fellow athletes and

her country. Reactions have been a mess of anger,

disbelief and denial. The couple said they doping

programme was approved at the very top. This is backed up by lab tests,

forensic reports, and interviews with other insiders.

Despite denials of state involvement, this official

laboratory covered up and destroyed hundreds of samples. It lost its

accreditation and has been out of action for more than one year. This

Moscow lawyer represents several athletes accused of doping. His

clients dismiss the evidence and call Yulia Stepanova cheating

hypocrite. She is not a hero because there is nothing brave in it. The

main motive for her is the a must for any other athlete who is

involved in doping, it is a financial motive. But a journalist

who has been investigating doping for decades, and exposed Lance

Armstrong, police people have misunderstood and undervalued

hurdles in Russia and in the wider world. Yulia Stepanova that this in

return for nothing except agree. -- did this. Some people have said that

she is a dope, but those people are showing a lack of empathy for where

she has come from and what she has done. If they bothered to look

closely at her story they would have nothing but unqualified admiration

for her. Nobody has done more for the anti-doping movement, no one

comes within 1 million miles. It is an acknowledgement to get your

teeth. President Putin says his revamped anti-doping programme will

be in place early in 2017. The parliament has passed a new law they

could send drug pushing coaches to jail. Many officers have been sacked

and other reforms promised. And yet the peer who forced the nation to

confront this deep-rooted corruption are still seen as enemies of the

state. They betrayed the Russian doping system and I am completely

fine with that. -- we betrayed. Yulia Stepanova hopes to compete in

the World Championships in London next summer. I have never been in

New York and I have never... In a country she does not know, with a

language she does not speak, her life has been turned upside down.

But she has few regrets about the turbulence she has brought to world

athletics. She has exposed an ugly truth that has gone on spoken for

years. No matter what her detractors say,

Yulia Stepanova will surely be known as one of the greatest

whistle-blowers in the history of sport.