Winning at Any Cost

At 86 years old, Dr. Vorobiev still stands more than six feet tall. Before finishing medical school in St. Petersburg, then known as Leningrad, he played for the Soviet Development Basketball Team in the 1950s, choosing not to pursue a professional athletic career because he thought it unstable. He was coached, he noted proudly, by the man who later led the Soviet Union to an upset victory over the United States at the 1972 Olympics.

His career in Russian sports medicine lasted through the 1990s. In deteriorating health, Dr. Vorobiev left Moscow five years ago for Chicago, where his son and grandchildren live.

Over two days of interviews there, in an assisted-living complex with Russian-language newspapers lying around the lobby, Dr. Vorobiev wore a blue Soviet tracksuit with “CCCP” on the back as he recounted his career. He spoke at the encouragement of his son, who had accompanied him to the hospital in recent weeks and said he wanted his father’s life documented in light of the recent doping revelations.

Dr. Vorobiev, speaking Russian that was translated by his son, recalled some details more vividly than others, relying on journals, documents and black-and-white photographs of athletes in motion to trigger memories dating to 1959, when he was hired as one of the Soviet Union’s first full-time sports doctors. He specialized in improving coordination, strength and flexibility among elite athletes, with expertise in foot injuries.

With little emotion, he described a system in which winning at any cost without getting caught was paramount. He projected loyalty to his country while plainly wrestling with contradictions: As a member of the medical commission of track and field’s global governing body, he policed doping at international competitions while knowing that many of Russia’s top athletes were using banned substances.

Russia’s sports ministry and sports science institute did not respond to telephone and email requests for comment.