Vitaly and Yuliya Stepanov with their son Robert, 6, during a warmup. Photo / New York Times
The boy and his parents blended in.
One Saturday in December, they competed in a set of holiday running races in which some participants wore reindeer onesies. Later in the day, they stopped at a dollar store to buy Secret Santa gifts, then sneaked them onto a neighbour's porch.
That night, they went to a Christmas parade where marching Boy Scouts handed out candy canes and Santa waved at spectators from inside a fire truck. The mother and her 6-year-old son posed for photos in front of a giant inflatable SpongeBob SquarePants.
"We are just like any middle-class American family," Vitaly Stepanov said of life with his wife, Yuliya, and their kindergartner son, Robert. "Well, except for the whistleblower part."
Oh, yes. That. The Stepanovs, in truth, are not a typical family at all: Yuliya, 33, once was a top middle-distance runner on Russia's national team. Vitaly, 37, worked for the Russian Anti-Doping Agency. Now living in America, they do their best to keep a low profile in a city they would rather not name.
They have a complicated past.
The Stepanovs were the whistleblowers who originally exposed Russia's widespread, state-sponsored doping program, before the 2016 Olympics. The information they provided, including secret recordings Yuliya made of coaches and athletes, led to Russia's being barred from the track and field events at those games in Rio de Janeiro. It also paved the way for Grigory Rodchenkov, the former head of the Moscow anti-doping laboratory, to divulge his role in hiding the failed doping tests of Russian athletes at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
The consequences of the combined disclosures still reverberate. Russia's continuing efforts to cover up the scandal recently resulted in a new, stricter ban from international sports.
"As whistleblowers, we never imagined things going this far, and it's surreal that the cheats won't be welcomed at the Olympic Games," Vitaly said. "Finally, after so many half-measures, something real is being done to Russia as a punishment."
But the Stepanovs have paid a price, too. In 2014, two days before a German documentary detailed their doping accusations, the couple left Russia with four suitcases and their infant son. They moved to Germany, fleeing into an uncertain future.
In the years since, Yuliya's former teammates have labeled them traitors, and Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, has called her "Judas." Meanwhile, on the promise of a job that did not materialise, the Stepanovs moved to the United States in 2015 and, the following year, applied for asylum to remain in this country. But that application is still pending.
For now, after moving at least six times since leaving Russia, they live in a sort of stateless limbo in which, according to two people with knowledge of the situation, they have been cooperating with authorities investigating fraud and conspiracy relating to Russian doping. The two people declined to be named because they are not authorised to speak publicly about the situation.
As for those back in Russia who have verbally attacked her and her husband, Yuliya was straightforward in her response. "They hate us for telling the truth," she said. "I've seen comments on the internet like, 'We should kill those traitors, we should go poison them.' But we feel safe here. We want to stay here."
For the past few years, their new American life has been based in a two-bedroom townhouse in a quiet, suburban development. On their mantel, three small American flags are on display and, for the moment, a sparkling Christmas tree sits in their living room.
Their refrigerator is covered with Robert's artwork. He spent a recent Saturday drawing at least a half-dozen iterations of a toothy shark and created a mountain scene as a parting gift for a visitor.
In his bedroom, a poster of the Russian alphabet is affixed to the wall above his desk. He can understand and speak the language because his parents converse in Russian with him at home, and his mother tells Russian fairy tales and sings Russian songs for him before bedtime.
Robert celebrated his sixth birthday at a trampoline park with friends, and he said he wants to be a zoologist to help animals such as his pet fish, Racer.
Life is good, his parents said.
"I feel like I'm home here, and I'm happy here, and I wake up every morning with my family and have this beautiful view," Yuliya said from her kitchen as she watched a dozen deer graze only feet from her back porch. "I feel like it was my destiny to end up here."
While she left most of her possessions in Russia when she and Vitaly ran for their lives, she did carry with her a deep sense of betrayal. It started in her childhood. Her father, who died of cancer when she was 27, beat her, her mother and her two sisters, she said, and often scolded her for having Olympic dreams. He wanted her to work on their potato farm instead.
Her coaches turned on her when she received a two-year ban for blood values that indicated doping. Her teammates, even her best friend, declined to stand with her and fight the team's doping. By the time she arrived in America, she said, she had cut most ties with people outside her family. She admitted that she is cautious about forging relationships with new friends.
"I don't want anyone close to me because I could be hurt," she said.
She likes that Americans tend to be friendly, though, and that the ones she knows don't pry into her past. When mingling with her neighbours or the women in her running group, she smiles easily and has a natural radiance to her, but keeps her backstory to herself. Sometimes, that story finds her.
Yuliya said her heart sank when a neighbour once said she and her Russian husband had seen Yuliya on Russian TV.
"She told me, 'I just want to let you know that we are on your side,'" Yuliya recalled. But when she told Vitaly about the conversation, he snapped, "I told you not to talk to strangers."
Yet at times, she has been very vocal about the need for clean sports, testifying to Congress about doping and speaking publicly about it at the White House.
The Stepanovs said they support themselves through financial arrangements with the International Olympic Committee. Vitaly works as a consultant, meeting with the IOC's president, Thomas Bach, and some of the same Olympic officials he battled in 2016 as he tried, but failed, to get Yuliya into the Rio Games. Yuliya receives an IOC scholarship that provides financial support for athletes training for the Olympics. It pays for her training expenses, though it is unlikely she will ever get to run in the games.
Despite the income — much more than the US$18,000 a year Vitaly said he would be making at the Russian Anti-Doping Agency — the Stepanovs live frugally. Most of their furniture came from Craigslist or from local benefactors, they said. Yuliya's favourite store is Ross Dress for Less, and she drives a 2012 Ford Escape with nearly 184,000 miles on its odometer. Their go-to pizza dinner is the $5.99 special from Domino's.
Vitaly, who attended high school and some college in the United States, has earned two college degrees online — he hopes to work in Olympic sports one day — and Yuliya was in school for a time, too. She enrolled to learn English, but found it easier to pick up words by watching subtitled films. The "Harry Potter" movies are her favourite. But she never thought she would need to know English.
When she left Russia five years ago, she thought she would return soon. She ended up leaving a great deal behind. Friends. Family, including one sister with kidney cancer that appears to have spread. She said she Skypes with her relatives about once a month. She knows she may never again see the sentimental items she didn't bother to take with her: photos of family and friends; her grandfather's World War II medals; the silver cup Vitaly's parents gave to Robert when he was born.
Vitaly said he had moved on from those memories. He is a practical man. But sometimes there are exceptions.
For example, it makes little practical sense for him to help Yuliya train for next year's Tokyo Olympics. They are both aware that her window as an elite runner most likely is closed. Her top recent time in her best event, the 800 metres, is more than four seconds slower than the Olympic qualifying standard.
"Now the Olympic dream is just a dream," Vitaly said. "But we keep pushing so she can have a goal to shoot for. It's nice to see Yuliya doing something she loves."
One of the handful of people Yuliya and Vitaly speak to on a consistent basis is Patrick Magyar, the former vice chairman of the Diamond League, the prestigious series of global meets. He became their unofficial adviser in 2014 soon after they left Russia, and now they talk weekly. Magyar, who retired from sports in 2017, helps Yuliya with her training and the couple with navigating their new lives.
Magyar won't count Yuliya out from the Olympics just yet. Despite her battling injuries in recent seasons, he said, she has a toughness that he has never seen — both on and off the track.
"The mental strength of that woman is absolutely second to none, and it's not typical for Yuliya to give up even if the odds are against her," Magyar said in a telephone interview. "But no matter what happens, she is going to be very, very fine, and Vitaly is a supersmart guy. If they just knew they could stay in the United States, their lives would be set."
On typical weekdays, the couple drop off Robert at school before heading to work out at a high school track or a gym. Yuliya races in collegiate events that welcome all comers, but she expects 2020 to be her last year of competition. She says she wants to have another baby. A girl, hopefully.
Robert doesn't know a thing about the central role his parents played in the global anti-doping fight. Last year, Vitaly read him a Russian children's book that addressed the issue of doping and was published by the Russian Anti-Doping Agency.
"Did you understand what I just read?" Vitaly remembered asking.
"No," Robert answered. "I'm going to bed now."
Robert has asked about the Olympics, however. He has a hunch that his mother is a pretty good runner. At the races this month, Yuliya won the women's 5K for the second year in a row, finishing seventh overall. Vitaly was second in the men's division.
In the boys' half-mile, Robert took second.
Asked about his performance, he didn't seem to care. "Oh, I don't know," the boy said. "Let's go find Santa. He has candy!"
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