Sochi gastro pub La Punto, which is recommended to fans on the World Cup website, "just so happens to be in the same building that housed the notorious antidoping laboratory" at the center of one of the "most elaborate cheating schemes in sports history," according to Keh & Ruiz of the N.Y. TIMES. The building is where Grigory Rodchenkov -- the chemist who ran drug testing in Russia for a decade, including at Sochi 2014 -- "spent the overnight hours of those Games tampering with more than a hundred urine samples to conceal the widespread use" of banned, performance-enhancing drugs among Russia’s top athletes. This month, as another major int'l sporting event "rolls through" the city, the structure can be seen as a "lingering symbol of the shadow" from which Russian sports "are still trying to emerge." On Tuesday, as fans packed the restaurant to watch Russia "pound out a win over Egypt," the building that "placed a pockmark on Russian sports" suddenly became "a place to celebrate it." The "only allusions to the building’s dark past are embedded deep within the restaurant’s extensive cocktail menu," which includes the B Sample -- tequila, sambuca and Tabasco sauce. That is "also the name of the supplementary urine sample required in Olympic drug testing" (N.Y. TIMES, 6/19).
